Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Time-Dependent Breakdown Mechanisms and Reliability Improvement in Edge Terminated AlGaN/GaN Schottky Diodes Under HTRB Tests

In this letter, we investigate the time-dependent breakdown mechanisms in edge terminated AlGaN/GaN lateral Schottky diodes under high-temperature reverse bias (HTRB) tests. Thanks to a combined experimental/simulation analysis, we ascribe the device failure to two distinct time-sequential breakdown mechanisms caused by a localized electric field peak at the edge termination corner. In particular, the combined effect of high electric field and temperature causes a first breakdown of the plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD)-Si3N4 followed by a second one in the AlGaN barrier. To validate this hypothesis, a 2-D TCAD simulator was used, and the breakdown path in Si3N4 was modeled by an inclusion of a narrow metal filament. The electrical simulations well reproduce the characteristics of the fresh and degraded GaN diodes. Finally, we demonstrate that the diode reliability under HTRB tests can be significantly improved by using a metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD)-Si3N4 dielectric in the edge termination. This reliability improvement is related to a better material quality of MOCVD-Si3N4, showing a higher breakdown field compared with the PEALD-Si3N4.
A Determination of the Factors Contributing to Internet Banking

Seventeen domestic banks, Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd. and Korea Post provide their subscribers with banking services such as statement service, funds transfer, and application for loans through Internet banking sites, which have become ever-increasing banking services for individual and corporation and government subscribers. First, this study aimed at presenting a process of determining factors to measure customers' perception while using Internet banking for doing transactions. Secondly, this paper attempted to unveil a list of major factors that Internet banking customers perceive while accessing the web sites to do their business with their banks. This study also suggested the features of those factors, which would help improve our understanding of Web usage for Internet banking. This result of the paper will lead further understanding of factors associated with Internet uses in other economic activities, which enable practitioners such as web designers and security specialists to provide Internet banking subscribers with better services in a safe and convenient web pages.
Current genetic data do not improve the prediction of type 2 diabetes mellitus: the CoLaus study.

CONTEXT Several genetic risk scores to identify asymptomatic subjects at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) have been proposed, but it is unclear whether they add extra information to risk scores based on clinical and biological data. OBJECTIVE The objective of the study was to assess the extra clinical value of genetic risk scores in predicting the occurrence of T2DM. DESIGN This was a prospective study, with a mean follow-up time of 5 yr. SETTING AND SUBJECTS The study included 2824 nondiabetic participants (1548 women, 52 ± 10 yr). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Six genetic risk scores for T2DM were tested. Four were derived from the literature and two were created combining all (n = 24) or shared (n = 9) single-nucleotide polymorphisms of the previous scores. A previously validated clinic + biological risk score for T2DM was used as reference. RESULTS Two hundred seven participants (7.3%) developed T2DM during follow-up. On bivariate analysis, no differences were found for all but one genetic score between nondiabetic and diabetic participants. After adjusting for the validated clinic + biological risk score, none of the genetic scores improved discrimination, as assessed by changes in the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (range -0.4 to -0.1%), sensitivity (-2.9 to -1.0%), specificity (0.0-0.1%), and positive (-6.6 to +0.7%) and negative (-0.2 to 0.0%) predictive values. Similarly, no improvement in T2DM risk prediction was found: net reclassification index ranging from -5.3 to -1.6% and nonsignificant (P ≥ 0.49) integrated discrimination improvement. CONCLUSIONS In this study, adding genetic information to a previously validated clinic + biological score does not seem to improve the prediction of T2DM.
Small-amplitude perturbations of shape for a nearly spherical bubble in an inviscid straining flow (steady shapes and oscillatory motion)

The method of domain perturbations is used to study the problem of a nearly spherical bubble in an inviscid, axisymmetric straining flow. Steady-state shapes and axisymmetric oscillatory motions are considered. The steady-state solutions suggest the existence of a limit point at a critical Weber number, beyond which no solution exists on the steady-state solution branch which includes the spherical equilibrium state in the absence of flow (e.g. the critical value of 1.73 is estimated from the third-order solution). In addition, the first-order steady-state shape exhibits a maximum radius at θ = ⅙π which clearly indicates the barrel-like shape that was found earlier via numerical finite-deformation theories for higher Weber numbers. The oscillatory motion of a nearly spherical bubble is considered in two different ways. First, a small perturbation to a spherical base state is studied with the ad hoc assumption that the steady-state shape is spherical for the complete Weber-number range of interest. This analysis shows that the frequency of oscillation decreases as Weber number increases, and that a spherical bubble shape is unstable if Weber number is larger than 4.62. Secondly, the correct steady-state shape up to O(W) is included to obtain a rigorous asymptotic formula for the frequency change at small Weber number. This asymptotic analysis also shows that the frequency decreases as Weber number increases; for example, in the case of the principal mode (n = 2), ω2 = ω00(1−0.31W), where ω0 is the oscillation frequency of a bubble in a quiescent fluid.
Polysaccharide Purified from Ganoderma lucidum Induces Gene Expression Changes in Human Dendritic Cells and Promotes T Helper 1 Immune Response in BALB/c Mice

Ganoderma lucidum is a medicinal mushroom in China and other Asian countries. The polysaccharide from G. lucidum (PS-G) is a branched (1→6)-β-d-glucan moiety. In this study, we examined the effects of PS-G on human monocyte-derived dendritic cells (DCs) with microarray analysis by Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 GeneChip. In comparing mean signal values between PS-G-treated DCs with untreated DCs, 3477 (17%) probe sets were up-regulated, and 4418 (19%) probe sets were down-regulated after PS-G treatment. These results demonstrate that genes associated with phagocytosis (CD36, CD206, and CD209) are decreased and genes associated with proinflammatory chemokines (CCL20, CCL5, and CCL19), cytokines [interleukin (IL)-27, IL-23A, IL-12A, and IL-12B], and costimulatory molecules (CD40, CD54, CD80, and CD86) are increased. To confirm the microarray data, we further investigated the effect of PS-G on antigen-specific antibody and cytokine production in BALB/c mice. Immunization with ovalbumin (OVA)/PS-G showed that the anti-OVA IgG2a levels were significantly increased compared with OVA alone in BALB/c mice. Together, our data demonstrate that PS-G could effectively promote the activation and maturation of immature DCs, preferring a T helper 1 response. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate that the data from microarray analysis could be correlated with the in vivo effect of the immune-enhancing compound.
Biological and clinical developments in melanoma vaccines

The identification of antigens recognised on human tumours by autologous T-lymphocytes has opened the way for vaccination strategies involving defined tumour antigens. These vaccinations are therapeutic, i.e. they involve patients with detectable disease. Tumour regressions have been observed in a minority of melanoma patients in Phase I/II trials. Some of these regressions have been complete and long lasting. Improving the efficacy of therapeutic vaccines will critically depend on their capacity to trigger a robust immune response, on the development of appropriate methods to monitor these antitumour immune responses to vaccination and on a better understanding of the mechanisms used by tumours to escape immune attack. Finally, the initiation of large randomised Phase III trials will determine the impact of these vaccines on melanoma treatment.
Characterization of intracellular polysaccharides of Streptomyces.

The intracytoplasmic accumulation of polysaccharides has been demonstrated in four species of Streptomyces. After extraction and purification, the structural properties of these polysaccharides were investigated by chemical, spectrophotometric, and enzymatic methods. The results clearly indicated that the streptomycete polysaccharides have a degree of branching and a macromolecular structure similar to that of the glycogens isolated from other bacteria and animal sources.
Automated Model-based System Reconfiguration: A Case Study

Cloud computing promises the benefit that service providers can save operating costs by increasing their resource efficiency through sharing resources. However, to increase resource efficiency, the cloud provider’s system must be capable to adapt to changes in the customer’s workload, e.g., scaling down if the workload decreases. Thus, cloud providers work on using dynamic resource reconfiguration approaches to cope with variable workloads. Currently, the service provider Blue Yonder uses dedicated systems to fulfill the customer SLAs. A more dynamic resource allocation would be more beneficial to increase resource efficiency and to react on changes on the customer’s requirements. The goal of this thesis is to develop an adaptation process based on architecture-level performance models to predict the impact of the changes in the workload to adapt the system accordingly. This work presents an approach which uses an architecture-level performance model to execute performance predictions and reconfigures the system architecture based on the prediction results. For this purpose, we have extended an existing performance model of the Blue Yonder system by adding another service that Blue Yonder offers. We have calibrated and validated the extended model in several scenarios based on measured performance metrics. Based on this performance model, we have developed a resource reconfiguration process, which automatically adapts Blue Yonder’s system to changes in its environment (e.g., customer workload changes). The purpose of this adaptation process is to ensure performance guarantees while maintaining resource efficiency. Our reconfiguration process has been specified with the adaptation process model which is part of the Descartes MetaModel. Our modeled process is able to (a) allocate new server instances, (b) deallocate existing server instances to release used resources and (c) optimize an existing allocation by migrating server instances to increase the resource efficiency. Additionally, we have adjusted our reconfiguration process to trade-off performance requirements of customers with different priorities. The evaluation has shown that the performance predictions based on the model are in the range of an acceptable deviation of the real software’s measured performance. Furthermore, we have shown that the process is able to perform the described resource reconfigurations in scenarios with single customers as well as in scenarios with multiple customers and different priorities. The results show that the Blue Yonder system suits very well to apply a model-based adaptation process to adapt the system to workload changes. Thereby, Blue Yonder is able to increase resource efficiency, thus saving operating costs.
Prevalence of Taking Actions to Control Blood Pressure Among Adults With Self‐Reported Hypertension in 18 States and the District of Columbia, 2009

The authors used 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data to assess the prevalence of taking actions to control hypertension among adults with self‐reported hypertension. Differences by descriptive characteristics (sex, age, race/ethnicity, access to health care, medication adherence), presence of other health risk factors (overweight/obesity, smoking, heavy drinking, inadequate fruit/vegetable intake, and physical inactivity), and comorbidities (diabetes, high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, and stroke) were compared. The prevalence of hypertension was 29.6%, and 75.0% of these patients reported taking antihypertensive medications, 73.1% changed eating habits, 72.8% decreased the use of salt, 78.8% reduced alcohol consumption, and 69.9% increased their physical activity. Overall, 87.2% reported taking two or more actions to reduce blood pressure. Patients taking antihypertensive medications were more likely to take two or more actions than their counterparts (90.6% vs 79.4%, P<.01). Those with at least one other health risk factor were 1.85 times as likely to take two or more actions as their counterparts (95% confidence interval, 1.18–2.92 times). More than 80% of hypertensive adults reported taking two or more actions to control blood pressure. The prevalence of taking actions differed significantly by descriptive characteristics, the presence health risk factors, and comorbidities.
Simulation: Learning From Mistakes While Building Communication and Teamwork

Medical errors are one of the leading causes of death annually in the United States. Many of these errors are related to poor communication and/or lack of teamwork. Using simulation as a teaching modality provides a dual role in helping to reduce these errors. Thorough integration of clinical practice with teamwork and communication in a safe environment increases the likelihood of reducing the error rates in medicine. By allowing practitioners to make potential errors in a safe environment, such as simulation, these valuable lessons improve retention and will rarely be repeated.
The pavA gene of Streptococcus pneumoniae encodes a fibronectin‐binding protein that is essential for virulence

Streptococcus pneumoniae colonizes the nasopharynx in up to 40% of healthy subjects, and is a leading cause of middle ear infections (otitis media), meningitis and pneumonia. Pneumococci adhere to glycosidic receptors on epithelial cells and to immobilized fibronectin, but the bacterial adhesins mediating these reactions are largely uncharacterized. In this report we describe a novel pneumococcal protein PavA, which binds fibronectin and is associated with pneumococcal adhesion and virulence. The pavA gene, present in 64 independent isolates of S. pneumoniae tested, encodes a 551 amino acid residue polypeptide with 67% identical amino acid sequence to Fbp54 protein in Streptococcus pyogenes. PavA localized to the pneumococcal cell outer surface, as demonstrated by immunoelectron microscopy, despite lack of conventional secretory or cell‐surface anchorage signals within the primary sequence. Full‐length recombinant PavA polypeptide bound to immobilized human fibronectin in preference to fluid‐phase fibronectin, in a heparin‐sensitive interaction, and blocked binding of wild‐type pneumococcal cells to fibronectin. However, a C‐terminally truncated PavA′ polypeptide (362 aa residues) failed to bind fibronectin or block pneumococcal cell adhesion. Expression of pavA in Enterococcus faecalis JH2–2 conferred > sixfold increased cell adhesion levels to fibronectin over control JH2–2 cells. Isogenic mutants of S. pneumoniae, either abrogated in PavA expression or producing a 42 kDa C‐terminally truncated protein, showed up to 50% reduced binding to immobilized fibronectin. Inactivation of pavA had no effects on growth rate, cell morphology, cell‐surface physico‐chemical properties, production of pneumolysin, autolysin, or surface proteins PspA and PsaA. Isogenic pavA mutants of encapsulated S. pneumoniae D39 were approximately 104‐fold attenuated in virulence in the mouse sepsis model. These results provide evidence that PavA fibronectin‐binding protein plays a direct role in the pathogenesis of pneumococcal infections.
Tomography of the intergalactic medium with Lyα forests in close QSO pairs

We study the three-dimensional distribution of non-virialized matter at z ∼ 2 using high-resolution spectra of quasi-stellar object (QSO) pairs and simulated spectra drawn from cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. We have collected the largest sample of QSO pairs ever observed with Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) at the European Southern Observatory-Very Large Telescope (ESO-VLT), with angular separations between ∼1 and 14 arcmin. The observed correlation functions of the transmitted flux in the H i Lyman a forest along and transverse to the lines of sight are in good agreement implying that the distortions in redshift space due to peculiar velocities are small. The clustering signal is significant up to velocity separations of ∼200 km s -1 , or about 3 h -1 comoving Mpc. The regions at lower overdensity (ρ/ρ ≤ 6.5) are still clustered but on smaller scales (Δu ≤ 100km s -1 ). The observed and simulated correlation functions are compatible at the 3σ level. A better concordance is obtained when only the low overdensity regions are selected for the analysis or when the effective optical depth of the simulated spectra is increased artificially, suggesting a deficiency of strong lines in the simulated spectra. We found that also a lower value of the power-law index of the temperature-density relation for the Lyman a forest gas improves the agreement between observed and simulated results. If confirmed, this would be consistent with other observations favouring a late He n reionization epoch (at z ∼3). We remark the detection of a significant clustering signal in the cross-correlation coefficient at a transverse velocity separation Δν ⊥ ∼ 500 km s -1 whose origin needs further investigation.
Explaining Trade Missions: the role of program characteristics in explaining trade mission’s outcomes.

This study examines to what extent trade mission (TM) program characteristics contribute to explain government initiated TM’s intangible and tangible outcomes. Firms participate in TMs in order to internationalise and its international success depends on a firm’s internal capabilities and competences. Therefore, the intangible outcomes are based on the International Business Competence (IBC); comprehending intangible capabilities that are extremely important for organisations in international business. On the other hand, the tangible outcomes include the contracts caused by the TM and to what extent the firm’s objective investment in the foreign market has been achieved. For this study the case of the Netherlands has been used. Hence, the sample consists of TMs organised by the Dutch government and executed in the period February 2014 till March 2015. Data from publicly available evaluations (factsheets), documents, reports and interviews were used to conduct this study. Findings suggest that participating firms are not completely satisfied about achieving their objectives. Also, the findings indicate that the TM program characteristics are less than optimal integrated in program components. Furthermore, the TM program characteristic “market exploration” has a positive effect on the capability “international orientation”. Characteristic “business culture exploration” positively affects the capabilities “international orientation, “international marketing skills” and the score on the objective investment in foreign market. Moreover, the characteristic “networking during program” positively influences the capabilities “international orientation”, “international innovativeness”, “international market orientation” and the score on the objective investment in foreign market. There is no supported link between the TM program characteristics and contracts in response to the TM. Concluding, it can be stated that the TM program characteristics “market exploration”, “business culture exploration” and “networking during the program” could influence the IBC and investment in foreign market. Also, additional findings do suggest a connection between the intangible and tangible outcomes.
Comparison of a clinical gait analysis method using videography and temporal-distance measures with 16-mm cinematography.

The purpose of this study was to compare a clinical gait analysis method using videography and temporal-distance measures with 16-mm cinematography in a gait analysis laboratory. Ten children with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy (means age = 8.8 +/- 2.7 years) and 9 healthy children (means age = 8.9 +/- 2.4 years) participated in the study. Stride length, walking velocity, and goniometric measurements of the hip, knee, and ankle were recorded using the two gait analysis methods. A multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine significant differences between the data collected using the two methods. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were determined to examine the relationship between the measurements recorded by the two methods. The consistency of performance of the subjects during walking was examined by intraclass correlation coefficients. No significant differences were found between the methods for the variables studied. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients ranged from . 79 to . 95, and intraclass coefficients ranged from . 89 to . 97. The clinical gait analysis method was found to be a valid tool in comparison with 16-mm cinematography for the variables that were studied.
Estrogenic activity of lambda‐cyhalothrin in the MCF‐7 human breast carcinoma cell line

Synthetic pyrethroids are widely used in both agricultural and urban environments for insect control. Lambda‐cyhalothrin (LCT) is one of the most common pyrethroids and is used mainly for controlling mosquitoes, fleas, cockroaches, flies, and ants around households. Previous studies have addressed the environmental behaviors and acute toxicities of LCT, but little is known about its chronic toxicity, such as estrogen‐like activity. In the present study, the estrogenic potential of LCT was evaluated using the MCF‐7 human breast carcinoma cell line. The in vitro E‐screen assay showed that 10−7 M LCT could significantly promote MCF‐7 cell proliferation, with a relative proliferative effect ratio of 45%. The cell proliferation induced by LCT could be blocked completely, however, by the addition of 10−9 M of the estrogen receptor (ER)‐antagonist ICI 182,780. The semiquantitative reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) results showed that the Trefoil factor 1 (pS2) and progesterone receptor gene expression were up‐regulated by 10−7 M LCT for 2‐ and 1.5‐fold, respectively. On the other hand, RT‐PCR, Western blot analysis, and immunofluorescent assay demonstrated that LCT significantly repressed the mRNA and protein expression levels of ERα and ERβ. These observations indicate that LCT possesses estrogenic properties and may function as a xenoestrogen, likely via a mechanism similar to that of 17β‐estradiol. The endocrine‐disruption potential of LCT should be considered when assessing the safety of this compound in sensitive environmental compartments.
Automatic knowledge extraction from chemical structures: the case of mutagenicity prediction

This work proposes a new structure–activity relationship (SAR) approach to mine molecular fragments that act as structural alerts for biological activity. The entire process is designed to fit with human reasoning, not only to make the predictions more reliable but also to permit clear control by the user in order to meet customized requirements. This approach has been tested on the mutagenicity endpoint, showing marked prediction skills and, more interestingly, bringing to the surface much of the knowledge already collected in the literature as well as new evidence.