Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Resonant-based test method for MEMS devices

In this paper a test method for capacitive Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) is presented. The proposed method utilizes the principle of resonant circuits to detect structural defects of capacitive MEMS devices. It is shown that a small variation of MEMS capacitance due to a defect alters the resonance frequency considerably. It is also shown that the variation of the output amplitude can be observed for fault detection if an inductor with a high quality factor is employed in the test circuit. Simulation results using an implemented MEMS comb-drive indicate that the proposed method can detect common faults such as missing, broken and short fingers.
Buffer Kinetics Shape the Spatiotemporal Patterns of IP3‐Evoked Ca2+ Signals

Ca2+ liberation through inositol 1,4,5‐trisphosphate receptors (IP3Rs) plays a universal role in cell regulation, and specificity of cell signalling is achieved through the spatiotemporal patterning of Ca2+ signals. IP3Rs display Ca2+‐induced Ca2+ release (CICR), but are grouped in clusters so that regenerative Ca2+ signals may remain localized to individual clusters, or propagate globally between clusters by successive cycles of Ca2+ diffusion and CICR. We used confocal microscopy and photoreleased IP3 in Xenopus oocytes to study how these properties are modulated by mobile cytosolic Ca2+ buffers. EGTA (a buffer with slow ‘on‐rate’) speeded Ca2+ signals and ‘balkanized’ Ca2+ waves by dissociating them into local signals. In contrast, BAPTA (a fast buffer with similar affinity) slowed Ca2+ responses and promoted ‘globalization’ of spatially uniform Ca2+ signals. These actions are likely to arise through differential effects on Ca2+ feedback within and between IP3R clusters, because Ca2+ signals evoked by influx through voltage‐gated channels were little affected. We propose that cell‐specific expression of Ca2+‐binding proteins with distinct kinetics may shape the time course and spatial distribution of IP3‐evoked Ca2+ signals for specific physiological roles.
On variational eigenvalue approximation of semidefinite operators

Eigenvalue problems for semidefinite operators with infinite dimensional kernels appear for instance in electromagnetics. Variational discretizations with edge elements have long been analyzed in terms of a discrete compactness property. As an alternative, we show here how the abstract theory can be developed in terms of a geometric property called the vanishing gap condition. This condition is shown to be equivalent to eigenvalue convergence and intermediate between two different discrete variants of Friedrichs estimates. Next we turn to a more practical means of checking these properties. We introduce a notion of compatible operator and show how the previous conditions are equivalent to the existence of such operators with various convergence properties. In particular the vanishing gap condition is shown to be equivalent to the existence of compatible operators satisfying an Aubin-Nitsche estimate. Finally we give examples demonstrating that the implications not shown to be equivalences, indeed are not.
Flicker Noise Up-Conversion due to Harmonic Distortion in Van der Pol CMOS Oscillators

Harmonic content modulation of the oscillator output voltage can contribute to flicker noise up-conversion in LC-tuned oscillators. The paper reports a quantitative analysis of the effect in Van der Pol oscillators using the framework of the impulse sensitivity function (ISF). It is shown that most of the up-conversion efficiency results from the first harmonic of the ISF, which is not perfectly in quadrature to the output voltage waveform, and from the first harmonic of the transistor current, which is slightly lagging the voltage waveform. A closed-form expression of 1/f3 phase noise in voltage-limited LC-tuned oscillator is derived that is in good agreement with circuit simulations. The paper also shows that the values of both phase shifts are determined by the non-linearity of the active element and are linked to the relevant oscillator parameters, i.e., excess gain and tank quality factor.
Claims Cost Estimation of Large Insurance Losses

This paper demonstrates our analysis of a liability data set from Royal & SunAlliance. The liability data set is heavy-tailed and the analysis is based on a systematic, unified approach to the estimation of heavy-tailed loss distributions. The method has recently been developed in Royal & SunAlliance and is based on a parametric estimator, the heavy-tailed modified Champernowne distribution, which is corrected with a non-parametric estimator. The correction is obtained by transforming the data set with the estimated modified Champernowne cdf and then estimating the density of the transformed data set by using the classical kernel density estimator. In this paper, we also demonstate a simulation study that calculates the expected cost and the volatility in the liability portfolio, which are fundamental for calculating the premium.
Evaluating a Pivot-Based Approach for Bilingual Lexicon Extraction

A pivot-based approach for bilingual lexicon extraction is based on the similarity of context vectors represented by words in a pivot language like English. In this paper, in order to show validity and usability of the pivot-based approach, we evaluate the approach in company with two different methods for estimating context vectors: one estimates them from two parallel corpora based on word association between source words (resp., target words) and pivot words and the other estimates them from two parallel corpora based on word alignment tools for statistical machine translation. Empirical results on two language pairs (e.g., Korean-Spanish and Korean-French) have shown that the pivot-based approach is very promising for resource-poor languages and this approach observes its validity and usability. Furthermore, for words with low frequency, our method is also well performed.
Building authentic midbrain dopaminergic neurons from stem cells - lessons from development

The challenge with controlling the differentiation of human pluripotent cells to generate functional dopaminergic neurons for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease has undergone significant progress in recent years. Here, we summarize the differences between newer and older protocols for generating midbrain dopaminergic neurons from human pluripotent stem cells, and we highlight the importance of following developmental pathways during differentiation. The field has now developed to a point where it is timely to take human pluripotent stem cells one step closer to clinical use, and cell criteria to be fulfilled for such developments are outlined in this review.
Price Dispersion in the Small and in the Large: Evidence from an Internet Price Comparison Site

This paper examines 4 million daily price observations for over 1000 consumer electronics products on the price comparison site Shopper.com. We find little support for the notion that prices on the Internet are converging to the “law of one price. ” In addition, observed levels of price dispersion vary systematically with the number of firms listing prices. The difference between the two lowest prices (the “gap”) averages 22 percent when two firms list prices, and falls to 3.5 percent in markets where 17 firms list prices. These empirical results are an implication of a general “clearinghouse” model of equilibrium price dispersion.
The NORPEQ patient experiences questionnaire: Data quality, internal consistency and validity following a Norwegian inpatient survey

Aims: This article describes the development of a questionnaire designed for comparisons of patient experiences of hospital care within the Nordic countries. The results of testing for data quality, reliability, and validity are presented following a Norwegian survey. Methods: Following a literature review and consultation within an expert group six items were developed measuring patient experiences together with two items assessing global satisfaction and perception of incorrect treatment. The questions were included in a questionnaire that was mailed to 500 patients randomly selected from patients receiving inpatient treatment at a large university hospital in Norway. Principal component analysis was used to assess dimensionality. Reliability was assessed by the internal consistency and test—retest methods. Construct validity was assessed by the scale's correlation with variables known to be related to patient experiences. Results: A total of 244 (48.8%) patients responded. Levels of missing data ranged from 0.4% to 2.5%. The six items in the questionnaire that measured important aspects of patient experiences with the services contributed to a single scale with item-total correlations in the range 0.59—0.71 and a Cronbach's alpha of 0.85. The test—retest intraclass correlation was 0.88. Conclusions: The NORPEQ is a brief measure of patient experiences that covers important aspects of the healthcare encounter. It shows good evidence of reliability and validity and is relatively easy to apply alongside existing national surveys.
Advances in real-time magnetic resonance imaging of the vocal tract for speech science and technology research

Real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) of the moving vocal tract during running speech production is an important emerging tool for speech production research providing dynamic information of a speaker's upper airway from the entire midsagittal plane or any other scan plane of interest. There have been several advances in the development of speech rtMRI and corresponding analysis tools, and their application to domains such as phonetics and phonological theory, articulatory modeling, and speaker characterization. An important recent development has been the open release of a database that includes speech rtMRI data from five male and five female speakers of American English each producing 460 phonetically balanced sentences. The purpose of the present paper is to give an overview and outlook of the advances in rtMRI as a tool for speech research and technology development.
Comparing glottal-flow-excited statistical parametric speech synthesis methods

This paper studies the performance of glottal flow signal based excitation methods in statistical parametric speech synthesis. The current state of the art in excitationmodeling is reviewed and three excitation methods are selected for experiments. Two of the methods are based on the principal component analysis (PCA) decomposition of estimated glottal flow pulses. While the first one uses only the mean of the pulses, the second method uses 12 principal components in addition to the mean signal for modeling the glottal flow waveform. The third method utilizes a glottal flow pulse library from which pulses are selected according to target and concatenation costs. Subjective listening tests are carried out to determine the quality and similarity of the synthetic speech of one male and one female speaker. The results show that the PCA-based methods are rated best both in quality and similarity, but adding more components does not yield any improvements.
The cane toad's (Chaunus [Bufo] marinus) increasing ability to invade Australia is revealed by a dynamically updated range model

Invasive species threaten biological diversity throughout the world. Understanding the dynamics of their spread is critical to mitigating this threat. In Australia, efforts are underway to control the invasive cane toad (Chaunus [Bufo] marinus). Range models based on their native bioclimatic envelope suggest that the cane toad is nearing the end of its invasion phase. However, such models assume a conserved niche between native and invaded regions and the absence of evolution to novel habitats. Here, we develop a dynamically updated statistical model to predict the growing extent of cane toad range based on their current distribution in Australia. Results demonstrate that Australian cane toads may already have the ability to spread across an area that almost doubles their current range and that triples projections based on their native distribution. Most of the expansion in suitable habitat area has occurred in the last decade and in regions characterized by high temperatures. Increasing use of extreme habitats may indicate that novel ecological conditions have facilitated a broader realized niche or that toad populations at the invasion front have evolved greater tolerance to extreme abiotic conditions. Rapid evolution to novel habitats combined with ecological release from native enemies may explain why some species become highly successful global invaders. Predicting species ranges following invasion or climate change may often require dynamically updated range models that incorporate a broader realization of niches in the absence of natural enemies and evolution in response to novel habitats.
Supervised Classification of Genetic Sequences for Population Analysis

We used a Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm for analysis of biological populations through supervised classification of sequence data. We describe an open-source software which implements the method, and apply the method and the program to analyze environmentally challenged populations of the estuarine fish Fundulus heteroclitus. Specifically, we investigate whether the genetic composition (DNA sequence) of a particular detoxification locus predicts population assignment of fish to chemically contaminated versus clean estuaries. The analysis method uses an SVM algorithm to assign individual fish, characterized by their allelic composition, into a toxic-resistant or ∗The corresponding author. Mailing address: San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132. E-mail: ljubomir@sfsu.edu. non-resistant group. We employed classification error in assignment as a measure of population similarity. The results validate the proposed method by providing supporting evidence for the previously suggested role of AHR1 (aryl hydrocarbon receptor) locus in the toxic response pathway of Fundulus heteroclitus.
A Monitoring System for Runtime Adaptations of Streaming Applications

Streaming languages are adequate for expressing many applications quite naturally and have been proven to be a good approach for taking advantage of the intrinsic parallelism of modern CPU architectures. While numerous works focus on improving the throughput of streaming programs, we rather focus on satisfying quality-of-service requirements of streaming applications executed along-side non-streaming processes. We monitor synchronous dataflow (SDF) programs at runtime both at the application and system levels in order to identify violations of quality-of-service requirements. Our monitoring requires the programmer to provide the expected throughput of its application (e.g. 25 frames per second for a video decoder), then takes full benefit from the compilation of the SDF graph to detect bottlenecks in this graph and identify causes among processor or memory overloading. It can then be used to perform dynamic adaptations of the applications in order to optimize the use of computing and memory resources.
AdS spacetimes from wrapped D3-branes

We derive a geometrical characterization of a large class of AdS3 and AdS2 supersymmetric spacetimes in type IIB supergravity with non-vanishing five-form flux using G-structures. These are obtained as special cases of a class of supersymmetric spacetimes with an or (time) factor that are associated with D3 branes wrapping calibrated two or three cycles, respectively, in manifolds with SU(2), SU(3), SU(4) and G2 holonomy. We show how two explicit AdS solutions, previously constructed in gauged supergravity, satisfy our more general G-structure conditions. For each explicit solution, we also derive a special holonomy metric which, although singular, has an appropriate calibrated cycle. After analytic continuation, some of the classes of AdS spacetimes give rise to known classes of BPS bubble solutions with and symmetry. These have 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 supersymmetry, respectively. We present a new class of 1/8 BPS geometries with symmetry, obtained by analytic continuation of the class of AdS spacetimes associated with D3-brane wrapped on associative three cycles.
Simulating Supply Chain Activities and Providing RFID Event Data for Test

With RFID technology, a traditional supply chain could gain considerable improvement on its efficiency. However, applications based on RFID should be thoroughly tested before deployment. Building a RFID-enhanced supply chain environment could be costly, especially for small companies and researchers who just need to verify their prototypes with RFID event data. In this paper, we introduce an intuitive model to simulate supply chain activities and generate RFID data. Our model is derived from the definition of state diagram, thus we can use a (item Class, quantity, source, target, start Time, end Time) tuple to represent a single transport in supply chain. Then, we build a supply chain scenario and simulate activities by using scripting programming on our simulation framework. The experiment shows that our work can provide acceptable input for functionality test, which requires the relativity of RFID data in supply chain environments.
Efficient Simulation Budget Allocation for Selecting an Optimal Subset

We consider a class of the subset selection problem in ranking and selection. The objective is to identify the top m out of k designs based on simulated output. Traditional procedures are conservative and inefficient. Using the optimal computing budget allocation framework, we formulate the problem as that of maximizing the probability of correctly selecting all of the top-m designs subject to a constraint on the total number of samples available. For an approximation of this correct selection probability, we derive an asymptotically optimal allocation and propose an easy-to-implement heuristic sequential allocation procedure. Numerical experiments indicate that the resulting allocations are superior to other methods in the literature that we tested, and the relative efficiency increases for larger problems. In addition, preliminary numerical results indicate that the proposed new procedure has the potential to enhance computational efficiency for simulation optimization.
Does the Sharing of Execution Units Improve Performance/Power of Multicores?

Several studies and recent real-world designs have promoted sharing of underutilized resources between cores in a multicore processor to achieve better performance/power. It has been argued that when utilization of such resources is low, sharing has a negligible impact on performance while offering considerable area and power benefits. In this article, we investigate the performance and performance/watt implications of sharing large and underutilized resources between pairs of cores in a multicore. We first study sharing of the entire floating-point datapath (including reservation stations and execution units) by two cores, similar to AMD’s Bulldozer. We find that while this architecture results in power savings for certain workload combinations, it also results in significant performance loss of up to 28%. Next, we study an alternative sharing architecture where only the floating-point execution units are shared, while the individual cores retain their reservation stations. This reduces the highest performance loss to 14%. We then extend the study to include sharing of other large execution units that are used infrequently, namely, the integer multiply and divide units. Subsequently, we analyze the impact of sharing hardware resources in Simultaneously Multithreaded (SMT) processors where multiple threads run concurrently on the same core. We observe that sharing improves performance/watt at a negligible performance cost only if the shared units have high throughput. Sharing low-throughput units reduces both performance and performance/watt. To increase the throughput of the shared units, we propose the use of Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Boosting (DVFB) of only the shared units that can be placed on a separate voltage island. Our results indicate that the use of DVFB improves both performance and performance/watt by as much as 22% and 10%, respectively.
End-user perspectives on the Adoption of Wireless Applications: Price of Convenience and a Model for Contextual Analysis

Information services delivered via wireless, portable communication devices continue to pervade our work and leisure spaces. While people are continuously bombarded with promises of newer and better ways to maintain contact with others and to have constant access to information, however, there remain a number of open issues that inhibit the potential for an open information society. The bidirectional influence between such wireless technologies and applications and their potential end-users, contributes to the development of both the technologies and applications and the social setting in which they are embedded. In this paper, we extend current studies of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) uptake by integrating interpretations of “ubiquitous computing” and its pervasion of everyday life. We draw upon findings from a range of IS research to structure our future studies of adoption issues in relation to a variety of wireless application cases. We show that, while some “traditional” IS/IT dimensions of uptake still hold, there are now a variety of other “nonutilitarian (hedonic)” factors that developers and designers need to take into account. We conclude by proposing a research model – expanded from model of user acceptability and product uptake, a descriptive framework based on the “Price of Convenience”(Ng-Kruelle, Swatman, Rebne and Hampe 2002).
Simulation in paediatric training

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habitAristotle This quote from the Greek philosopher Aristotle from over 2000 years ago is still relevant today in the context of paediatric medical education. Simulation is a tool that can reinforce standards of clinical practice as ‘habit’ contributing to trainee's development as paediatricians. This review shares some of the issues related to learning in the paediatric service environment and demonstrates how simulation can add benefit and value to both the educational process and clinical service. We have structured the article around a series of questions, which will be of relevance to all those using simulation for paediatric training. It is important to have a shared mental model of what we mean by simulation, David Gaba1 describes it as ‘a technique, not a technology to replace or amplify real experiences with guided experiences that evoke or replicate substantial aspects of the real world in a fully interactive manner’. It provides a safe context where confidence as well as competence can be continuously enhanced with excellence as the goal for patient care.2 ,3 The term simulation can be used to describe simulated patients; either manikin or actors, or simulated scenarios in either a simulated environment, for example, simulation centre, or simulated situation in the clinical environment known as in situ simulation. The recognition of the importance of simulation in clinical education originated from its impact in other high-reliability organisations, such as aviation, the military and the oil industry.4 Our increased understanding of systems thinking and ensuring the provision of consistent high quality care in different healthcare settings has highlighted how simulation can be used for many purposes5 including enhancing the design of new delivery systems. There are several drivers for using simulation in …