Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integration new Apriori algorithm MDNC and six sigma to improve array yield in the TFT-LCD industry

To increase process yield is the most effective way to raise income of TFT-LCD industry. This research is divided into two phases. In the first phase, We have modified Apriori algorithm called Multi-Dimension Non-Continuous (MDNC), an algorithm by eliminating the limitations imposed by traditional pattern matching of continuous data, to mine the association rules in the cross-day discrete manufacturing data and find out some valuable information. The second phase use of MDNC system integrated with six-sigma quality project is set up as the assessment platform which indexes performance and improve performance tracing, to make sure the outcomes of project is profitable enough to reward financial benefit. The preliminary results show the system of new Apriori algorithm techniques integrated with six-sigma methodology is proposed to improve process yield of the Array manufacturing process, the deforming rate of production lines, reduce the cycle time, increase the profit and make the CpK value stable.
An Examination of Relative Age and Athlete Dropout in Female Developmental Soccer

Sport dropout rates among children and youth are a concern for researchers and policy makers. The impact of relative age effects (RAEs) on dropout trends has not been adequately examined in female samples. The purpose of this study was to longitudinally examine dropout in a female soccer cohort in Ontario, Canada. Registration entries for a one-year cohort were examined across a seven-year period (n = 9908; age 10–16 years). A chi-square analysis established the presence of RAEs in the initial year of registration. Survival analyses assessed the impact of relative age, competition level, and community size on athlete dropout. A median survival rate of four years was observed for players born in the first quartile, while all remaining quartiles had a median survival of three years. Community size did not predict dropout in this analysis; however, competition level was a significant predictor, with competitive players being more likely to remain engaged vs. recreational players (55.9% vs. 20.7%). The observed trends are likely to have a significant impact from both a healthy development and systems perspective (e.g., economic/market loss). Intervention is needed to mitigate current dropout trends in female athletes. Practical applications are discussed.
Automatic Radar Waveform Recognition

In this paper, a system for automatically recognizing radar waveforms is introduced. This type of techniques are needed in various spectrum management, surveillance and cognitive radio or radar applications. The intercepted radar signal is classified to eight classes based on the pulse compression waveform: linear frequency modulation (LFM), discrete frequency codes (Costas codes), binary phase, and Frank, P1, P2, P3, and P4 polyphase codes. The classification system is a supervised classification system that is based on features extracted from the intercepted radar signal. A large set of potential features are presented. New features based on Wigner and Choi-Williams time-frequency distributions are proposed. The feature set is pruned by discarding redundant features using an information theoretic feature selection algorithm. The performance of the classification system is analyzed using extensive simulations. Simulation results show that the classification system achieves overall correct classification rate of 98% at signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 6 dB on data similar to the training data
How to engineer tool-chains for automotive E/E architectures?

The growing demand for both safety and comfort functionality in modern vehicles is rapidly increasing the complexity of automotive Electrical/Electronic (E/E) architectures. This makes it necessary to use specific design tools for modeling, implementing, and testing such systems. Although many tool vendors offer products covering different design and development phases, it is still cumbersome for car manufacturers to find the most appropriate tools that support their particular E/E architecture design process. And even with the proper set of tools, it remains an essential challenge to combine them into a consistent and flexible tool-chain, covering all design and development phases. This work is a first attempt to develop systematic approaches towards building such tool-chains. To this end, we provide an overview of the design process of E/E automotive architectures, its shortcomings and challenges, and study 22 possible tools currently available on the market. Based on this study, we quantify various usability and functionality aspects of the tools and use the outcome to evaluate their compatibility in terms of forming a tool-chain.
Blues for BLEU : Reconsidering the Validity of Reference-Based MT Evaluation

This article describes experiments a set of experiments designed to test whether reference-based machine translation evaluation methods (represented by BLEU) (a) measure translation “quality” and (b) whether the scores they generate are reliable as a measure for systems (rather than for particular texts). It considers these questions via three methods. First, it examines the impact of changing reference translations and using them in combination on BLEU scores. Second, it examines the internal consistency of BLEU scores, the extent to which reference-based scores for a part of a text represent the score of the whole. Third, it applies BLEU to human translation to determine whether BLEU can reliably distinguish human translation from MT output. The results of these experiments, conducted on a Chinese>English news corpus with eleven human reference translations, bring the validity of BLEU as a measure of translation quality into question and suggest that the score differences cited in a considerable body of MT literature are likely to be unreliable indicators of system performance due to an inherent imprecision in reference-based methods. Although previous research has found that human quality judgments largely correlate with BLEU, this study suggests that the correlation is an artefact of experimental design rather than an indicator of validity.
Predicting the Timing of Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC and Mid-Atlantic States in Response to Climate Change

Cherry blossoms, an icon of spring, are celebrated in many cultures of the temperate region. For its sensitivity to winter and early spring temperatures, the timing of cherry blossoms is an ideal indicator of the impacts of climate change on tree phenology. Here, we applied a process-based phenology model for temperate deciduous trees to predict peak bloom dates (PBD) of flowering cherry trees (Prunus×yedoensis ‘Yoshino’ and Prunus serrulata ‘Kwanzan’) in the Tidal Basin, Washington, DC and the surrounding Mid-Atlantic States in response to climate change. We parameterized the model with observed PBD data from 1991 to 2010. The calibrated model was tested against independent datasets of the past PBD data from 1951 to 1970 in the Tidal Basin and more recent PBD data from other locations (e.g., Seattle, WA). The model performance against these independent data was satisfactory (Yoshino: r2 = 0.57, RMSE = 6.6 days, bias = 0.9 days and Kwanzan: r2 = 0.76, RMSE = 5.5 days, bias = −2.0 days). We then applied the model to forecast future PBD for the region using downscaled climate projections based on IPCC's A1B and A2 emissions scenarios. Our results indicate that PBD at the Tidal Basin are likely to be accelerated by an average of five days by 2050 s and 10 days by 2080 s for these cultivars under a mid-range (A1B) emissions scenario projected by ECHAM5 general circulation model. The acceleration is likely to be much greater (13 days for 2050 s and 29 days for 2080s ) under a higher (A2) emissions scenario projected by CGCM2 general circulation model. Our results demonstrate the potential impacts of climate change on the timing of cherry blossoms and illustrate the utility of a simple process-based phenology model for developing adaptation strategies to climate change in horticulture, conservation planning, restoration and other related disciplines.
Microprocessor Speci cation in Hawk

Modern microprocessors require an immense invest ment of time and e ort to create and verify from the high level architectural design downwards We are exploring ways to increase the productivity of design engineers by creating a domain speci c language for specifying and simulating processor architectures We believe that the structuring principles used in modern functional programming languages such as static typ ing parametric polymorphism rst class functions and lazy evaluation provide a good formalism for such a domain speci c language and have made initial progress by creating a library on top of the functional language Haskell We have speci ed the integer sub set of an out of order superscalar DLX microproces sor with register renaming a reorder bu er a global reservation station multiple execution units and spec ulative branch execution Two key abstractions of this library are the signal abstract data type ADT which models the simulation history of a wire and the trans action ADT which models the state of an entire in struction as it travels through the microprocessor
Congenital Hepatic Fibrosis in the Franches-Montagnes Horse Is Associated with the Polycystic Kidney and Hepatic Disease 1 (PKHD1) Gene

Congenital hepatic fibrosis has been described as a lethal disease with monogenic autosomal recessive inheritance in the Swiss Franches-Montagnes horse breed. We performed a genome-wide association study with 5 cases and 12 controls and detected an association on chromosome 20. Subsequent homozygosity mapping defined a critical interval of 952 kb harboring 10 annotated genes and loci including the polycystic kidney and hepatic disease 1 (autosomal recessive) gene (PKHD1). PKHD1 represents an excellent functional candidate as variants in this gene were identified in human patients with autosomal recessive polycystic kidney and hepatic disease (ARPKD) as well as several mouse and rat mutants. Whereas most pathogenic PKHD1 variants lead to polycystic defects in kidney and liver, a small subset of the human ARPKD patients have only liver symptoms, similar to our horses with congenital hepatic fibrosis. The PKHD1 gene is one of the largest genes in the genome with multiple alternative transcripts that have not yet been fully characterized. We sequenced the genomes of an affected foal and 46 control horses to establish a comprehensive list of variants in the critical interval. We identified two missense variants in the PKHD1 gene which were strongly, but not perfectly associated with congenital hepatic fibrosis. We speculate that reduced penetrance and/or potential epistatic interactions with hypothetical modifier genes may explain the imperfect association of the detected PKHD1 variants. Our data thus indicate that horses with congenital hepatic fibrosis represent an interesting large animal model for the liver-restricted subtype of human ARPKD.
Awake craniotomy, an unusual indication

Resection of brain tumours carries a great potential of functional impairment, especially if the tumour is nestled close to functional areas of the brain. To escape this risk, awake craniotomy has been proposed as a surgical technique to facilitate maximum tumour resection with minimum impairment of neurological function. To have an awake cooperative patient who is compliant with neurological assessment, the technique should provide adequate sedation, analgesia, respiratory and haemodynamic stability. In this study, we reviewed the effectiveness of awake craniotomy as an alternative anaesthetic technique to general anaesthesia in twenty patients. All selected patients were suffering from variable co-morbidities that represent a constant threat to life if tumour resection is performed under general anaesthesia. Craniotomy was done under local anaesthesia and monitored conscious sedation. The candidates well tolerated the procedure (both sedation and pain scores ranged from 1 to 3), with haemodynamic stability (intra-operative heart rate was 84.4500Â±7.59830 and MAP was 90.6500 Â±10.28169) and adequate respiratory functions throughout the procedure (mean respiratory rate was 12.8Â± 1.63 breaths per minute and mean oxygen saturation was 97.35% Â± 1.5). Convenient resection of the tumor was achieved and uneventful post-operative recovery with minimal neurological deficits was reported in all cases.The technique used, adequately met the requirement for awake craniotomy in such group of patients having a relative risk from general anaesthesia.
Leveraging change blindness for redirection in virtual environments

We present change blindness redirection, a novel technique for allowing the user to walk through an immersive virtual environment that is considerably larger than the available physical workspace. In contrast to previous redirection techniques, this approach, based on a dynamic environment model, does not introduce any visual-vestibular conflicts from manipulating the mapping between physical and virtual motions, nor does it require breaking presence to stop and explicitly reorient the user. We conducted two user studies to evaluate the effectiveness of the change blindness illusion when exploring a virtual environment that was an order of magnitude larger than the physical walking space. Despite the dynamically changing environment, participants were able to draw coherent sketch maps of the environment structure, and pointing task results indicated that they were able to maintain their spatial orientation within the virtual world. Only one out of 77 participants across both both studies definitively noticed that a scene change had occurred, suggesting that change blindness redirection provides a remarkably compelling illusion. Secondary findings revealed that a wide field-of-view increases pointing accuracy and that experienced gamers reported greater sense of presence than those with little or no experience with 3D video games.
System design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for marine environmental sensing

Abstract : Technological improvements over the past decade have led to the widespread use of autonomous surface and underwater vehicles for data collection in marine environmental sensing and modeling in coastal environments. However, these vehicles and their sensors still have limitations, especially when tasked with observing highly dynamic or transient processes. We investigate the application of a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to the study of two such phenomena: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) and thermal plumes. A complete field-operable system was developed to identify and characterize HAB events through a human-monitored supervisory control system. This capability was extended with an infrared imaging camera for remote sensing of thermal plumes, enabling future work to augment the in-situ measurements of surface craft with thermal imagery from a UAV. Experiments in Singapore have led to the successful identification and subsequent study of algal blooms on multiple occasions and demonstrated the potential for observation and modeling of thermal plumes.
Multiple blockholders and rm valuation : Evidence from the Czech Republic

Using data for the Prague Stock Exchange in 1996 to 2005, I investigate how presence and power of multiple shareholders a ect rm valuation by studying stock price reaction to ownership changes. The presence of the second large shareholder (SLS) has about 4% positive e ect on the stock market valuation of the rm with large controlling shareholder. The results are in line with the theory that the SLS may limit rent extraction of controlling shareholder. The increase in power of the SLS has also positive stock price e ect. Stock price raises after a ownership change associated with a mandatory buyback o er. However, the positive e ect is eliminated by a presence of the SLS. The presence of the SLS thus substitutes takeover code in limiting private bene ts of
Methods of interpretation of borehole falling-head tests performed in compacted clay liners

The interpretation of falling-head tests in cased boreholes is discussed. These tests are commonly used to measure hydraulic conductivity of compacted clay liners and are often part of the construction quality assurance program. Three methods of interpretation are reviewed with data sets collected from real tests. Two of these methods have been the subject of past research by other authors: the Hvorslev, or time-lag, method and the velocity method. After the limitations of these two approaches have been underlined, a third method is proposed. It uses a best linear unbiased estimator to fit the theoretical head difference function in a plot of falling water column elevation as a function of time (Zt method). The Hvorslev method is found unreliable and is not recommended. The velocity method is theoretically sound, but statistical uncertainty can become high when this method is used in testing materials with low hydraulic conductivity, such as clay liners. Materials with low hydraulic conductivity tend to .
Implementation and Verification of a New California Type Profilograph Based on WLAN

In this paper, profile measurement mechanism of a conventional California type profilograph is discussed and a new analytical model to include the non-linear characteristics of the profile sensing mechanism is introduced. A new digital 7.6 m California type profilograph with the combination of a modern sensor, a roughness evaluation software, and a wireless LAN is implemented for improvement. The accuracy and repeatability of the new developed profilograph are evaluated. After verifying that the new profilograph has good correlation with the mechanical device, some experimental data from a trial site in Korea are gathered and PrI is automatically calculated on PDA. From trial site experiments and data analyses, the usefulness of the developed device is explained. The new profilograph has advantages that the measured data can be transferred to a remote site through network and it can be operated more safely. Its operation and training cost can be reduced much due to the adoption of wireless LAN technology.
Use of three-dimensional speckle tracking to assess left ventricular myocardial mechanics: inter-vendor consistency and reproducibility of strain measurements.

AIMS Since there is insufficient data available about the inter-vendor consistency of three-dimensional (3D) speckle-tracking (STE) measurements, we undertook this study to (i) assess the inter-vendor consistency of 3D LV global strain values obtained using two different scanners; (ii) identify the sources of inter-vendor inconsistencies, if any; and (iii) compare their respective intrinsic variability. METHODS AND RESULTS Sixty patients (38 ± 12 years, 64% males) with a wide range of LV end-diastolic volumes (from 74 to 205 ml) and ejection fractions (from 17 to 70%) underwent two 3D LV data set acquisitions using VividE9 and Artida ultrasound systems. Global longitudinal (Lε), radial (Rε), circumferential (Cε) and area (Aε) strain values were obtained offline using the corresponding 3D STE softwares. Despite being significantly different, Lε showed the closest values between the two platforms (bias = 1.5%, limits of agreement (LOA) from -2.9 to -5.9%, P < 0.05). Artida produced significantly higher values of both Cε and Aε than VividE9 (bias = 6.6, LOA: -14.1 to 0.9%, and bias = 6.0, LOA = -28.2-8.6%, respectively, P < 0.001). Conversely, Rε values obtained with Artida were significantly lower than those measured using VividE9 platform (bias = -24.2, LOA: 1.5-49.9, P < 0.001). All strain components showed good reproducibility (intra-class correlation coefficients: 0.82-0.98), except for Rε by Artida, which showed only a moderate reproducibility. CONCLUSION Apart from Lε, the inter-vendor agreement of Rε, Cε and Aε measured with Artida and VividE9 was poor. Reference values should be specific for each system and baseline and follow-up data in longitudinal studies should be obtained using the same 3D STE platform.
Genes Determine Stability and the Environment Determines Change in Cognitive Ability During 35 Years of Adulthood

Previous research has demonstrated stability of cognitive ability and marked heritability during adulthood, but questions remain about the extent to which genetic factors account for this stability. We conducted a 35-year longitudinal assessment of general cognitive ability using the Armed Forces Qualification Test administered to 7,232 male twins in early adulthood and readministered to a subset of 1,237 twins during late middle age. The proportion of variance in cognitive functioning explained by genetic factors was . 49 in young adulthood and . 57 in late middle age. The correlation between the two administrations was . 74 with a genetic correlation of 1.0, indicating that the same genetic influences operated at both times. Genetic factors were primarily responsible for stability, and nonshared environmental factors were primarily responsible for change. The genetic factors influencing cognition may change across other eras, but the same genetic influences are operating from early adulthood to late middle age.
Noncommutative Tachyons And String Field Theory

It has been shown recently that by turning on a large noncommutativity parameter, the description of tachyon condensation in string theory can be drastically simplified. We reconsider these issues from the standpoint of string field theory, showing that, from this point of view, the key fact is that in the limit of a large B-field, the string field algebra factors as the product of an algebra that acts on the string center of mass only and an algebra that acts on all other degrees of freedom carried by the string.
From The Cover : Epigenetic differences arise during the lifetime of monozygotic twins

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Feasibility and efficacy of cognitive telerehabilitation in early Alzheimer’s disease: a pilot study

Background This pilot study compared the effects of lexical-semantic stimulation through telecommunication technology (LSS-tele) with in-person LSS (LSS-direct) and unstructured cognitive treatment (UCS) in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. Methods Twenty-seven patients with Alzheimer’s disease in the very early stage (Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE] >26/30) were divided into three groups: seven patients received LSS-tele treatment, ten received standard LSS-direct intervention, and ten participants underwent UCS as control condition. Intervention treatments consisted of two weekly sessions of LSS (through teleconference or face to face depending on group assignment) or UCS exercises administered to small groups throughout a 3-month period. The main outcome measures were changes of global cognitive performance, language abilities, and memory function. Secondary outcome measures were changes in attention, working memory, executive functions, and visual-spatial abilities tests. Results The mean MMSE score improved significantly in LSS-tele and LSS-direct treatments; LSS-tele improved language abilities, both phonemic and semantic, and stabilized delayed verbal episodic memory with respect to an improved performance after the LSS-direct intervention and to a memory decline observed in the control group. Improvement was not achieved in any neuropsychological test score after UCS. Conclusion Clinical application of telecommunication technology to cognitive rehabilitation of elderly patients with neurodegenerative cognitive impairment is feasible and may improve global cognitive performance. Technical aspects to ameliorate efficacy of delivery may further improve its impact on domain-specific cognitive abilities.