Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adaptive Power and Rate Transmission in hybrid DS/FH CDMA Communications over Fading Channels

We consider a hybrid direct-sequence frequency-hopped (DS/FH) code division multiple access (CDMA) communication system, where the transmission power and data rate are adapted relative to the channel variation. Instead of random frequency hopping, hopping pattern is adaptively adjusted to obtain the maximum channel gain among available frequency slots. Transmission power and/or data rate are also adapted such that a target transmission quality is maintained. It is shown that the proposed scheme provides a higher average data rate than pure DS/CDMA with power and rate adaptations, subject to the identical average transmission power and bandwidth constraints.
Oxidation Behaviour of Nanoscale Multilayer CrAlYN/CrN Coatings Deposited by the Combined High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering/Unbalanced Magnetron Sputtering Technique

A 5 µm thick nanoscale multilayer CrAlYN/CrN coating was produced by high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) substrate pretreatment and subsequent coating deposition by unbalanced magnetron sputtering. HIPIMS pretreatment resulted in high adhesion due to local epitaxial growth on large substrate surface areas. Isothermal heat-treatment for 1 h at various temperatures up to 1 000 °C was carried out, X-ray analysis and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy revealed a coating structure stable up to 900 °C. Above 900 °C, the thin film decomposed into Cr2N and hcp-AlN, resulting in stress relaxation and reduced hardness, a dense and protective duplex-oxide with an Al-rich outer and a Cr-rich inner oxide layer formed at 1 000 °C.
Synthesis, growth and characterization of 1-(5-chlorothiophen-2-yl)-3-(2,4, 5-trimethoxyphenyl) prop-2-en-1-one single crystal: A potential NLO material

A potentially useful nonlinear optical (NLO) organic material, 1‐(5‐chlorothiophen‐2‐yl)‐3‐(24,5‐trimethoxyphenyl)prop‐2‐en‐1‐one(CTTMP), has been synthesized and grown as a high‐quality single crystal by the slow evaporation technique. The grown crystals were characterized by UV–visible spectroscopy. The material has thermal stability up to its melting point. Single beam Z‐scan technique was employed to study the third order NLO properties of the material.
Feature selection in omics prediction problems using cat scores and false nondiscovery rate control

We revisit the problem of feature selection in linear discriminant analysis (LDA), that is, when features are correlated. First, we introduce a pooled centroids formulation of the multiclass LDA predictor function, in which the relative weights of Mahalanobis-transformed predictors are given by correlation-adjusted $t$-scores (cat scores). Second, for feature selection we propose thresholding cat scores by controlling false nondiscovery rates (FNDR). Third, training of the classifier is based on James--Stein shrinkage estimates of correlations and variances, where regularization parameters are chosen analytically without resampling. Overall, this results in an effective and computationally inexpensive framework for high-dimensional prediction with natural feature selection. The proposed shrinkage discriminant procedures are implemented in the R package ``sda'' available from the R repository CRAN.
Statistical SRAM Read Access Yield Improvement Using Negative Capacitance Circuits

SRAM has become the dominant block in modern ICs and constitutes more than 50% of the die area. The increase of process variations with continued CMOS technology scaling is considered one of the major challenges for SRAM designers. This process variations increase causes the SRAM cells to functionally fail and reduces the chip functional yield considering the static noise margin stability failures (i.e., cell flips when accessed), write failures (i.e., cell is not written within the write window), and read access failures (i.e., incorrect read operation). In this paper, novel negative capacitance circuits are developed, for the first time, to statistically improve the SRAM read access yield under process variations by reducing the bitlines parasitic capacitance. Post layout simulation results, referring to an industrial hardware-calibrated TSMC 65-nm CMOS technology, show that the adoption of the negative capacitance circuit to a 512 SRAM cells column is capable of improving the read access yield from 61.9% to 100%.
A framework for automated and optimized ASIP implementation supporting multiple hardware description languages

Architecture Description Languages (ADLs) are widely used to perform design space exploration for Application Specific Instruction Set Processors (ASIPs). While the design space exploration is well supported by numerous tools providing high flexibility and quality, the methodology of automated implementation is limited to simple transformations. Assuming fixed architectural templates, information given in the ADL is directly mapped to a hardware description on Register Transfer Level (RTL). Gate-Level synthesis tools are not able to perform potential optimizations, as the computational complexity grows exponential with the size of the architecture. Information such as exclusiveness, parallelism or boolean relations are spread over multiple modules and therefore hard to determine. In this paper, we present an ASIP synthesis approach from architecture description languages, based on an Intermediate Representation (IR). The IR is the key technology to provide new language-independent high-level optimizations and to realize different hardware description language backends. The feasibility of our approach is proven in a case-study.
Heritability of Body Mass Index: A Comparison Between The Netherlands and Spain

Abstract Ahigh body mass index (BMI) is commonly used as an index of overweight and obesity. There is persistent evidence of high heritability for variation in BMI, but the effects of common environment appear inconsistent across different European countries. Our objective was to compare genetic and environmental effects on BMI in a sample of twins from two different European countries with distinct population and cultural backgrounds. We analysed data of adult female twins from the Netherlands Twin Register (222 monozygotic [MZ] and 103 dizygotic [DZ] pairs) and the Murcia Twin Register (Spain; 202 MZ and 235 DZ pairs). BMI was based on self-reported weight and height. Dutch women were taller and heavier, but Spanish women had a significantly higher mean BMI. The age related weight increase was significantly stronger in the Spanish sample. Genetic analyses showed that genetic factors are the main contributors to variation in height, weight, and BMI, within both countries. For height and weight, estimates of genetic variances did not differ, but for height, the estimate for the environmental variance was significantly larger in Spanish women. For BMI, both the genetic and the environmental variance components were larger in Spanish than in Dutch women.
Software Evolution in an Industrial Automation Ecosystem: An Exploratory Study

In software ecosystems (SECOs) both internal and external engineers develop software solutions for specific market segments and customers based on common technological platforms. SECOs pose new challenges for software engineering as the platforms are evolved by different development teams and communities. Despite a significant body of research only few empirical results are available on software evolution in SECOs. This paper reports results of an exploratory case study on change characteristics in an industrial automation SECO. We apply Buckley et al.'s framework of software change to characterize evolution in an industrial automation SECO. We further discuss evolution challenges we derived from our analyses.
Fabrication of a gecko-like hierarchical fibril array using a bonded porous alumina template

We report a new method to fabricate a hierarchical microfibril array by using bonded porous alumina templates. The fabrication approach extends a powerful and well-established technique of creating porous alumina to create a polymer multilevel structure, mimicking the hierarchical structure of gecko adhesive foot hairs. The nanoporous alumina (pore diameter ≈60 nm; interpore distance ≈100 nm) was generated by the anodization of an aluminum film in an oxalic acid solution. The microporous alumina was produced by exploiting the parallel wafer-scale processing of conventional lithography and anisotropic chemical etching of the thick film of anodic alumina pores. The micro- and nanoporous alumina membranes were subsequently brought into intimate contact and their bonding was accomplished by means of capillary forces and then van der Waals bonding. Hierarchical polymeric microfibrils (fibril diameter ≈10 µm; fibril length ≈70 µm) with nanofibril arrays at their tips were obtained after depositing a desired material into the pores and selective etching of the template membranes. The nanofibril has a lateral dimension of approximately 60 nm with length-to-diameter aspect ratios as high as 100:1.
Promoter Variants of the ADAM10 Gene and Their Roles in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Previous evidence has indicated that downregulated ADAM10 gives rise to epileptic seizures in Alzheimer’s disease, and this study investigated the association of ADAM10 with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) from a genetic perspective. A total of 496 TLE patients and 528 healthy individuals were enrolled and genotyped for ADAM10 promoter variants (rs653765 G > A and rs514049 A > C). The alleles, genotypes, and haplotypes were then compared with clarify the association of these variants with TLE and their impacts upon age at onset, initial seizure types before treatments, and responses to drug treatments. In cohorts I, II, and I + II, the frequencies of the A allele and AA genotype at rs514049 were consistently increased in the cases compared with the controls (p = 0.020 and p = 0.009; p = 0.008 and p = 0.009; p = 0.000 and p = 0.000; q = 0.003 and q = 0.002, respectively). In contrast, the frequency of the AC haplotype (rs653765–rs514049) decreased in cohorts I + II (p = 0.013). Further analyses of the TLE patients indicated that the AA genotype functioned as a predisposing factor to drug-resistant TLE and the AC haplotype as a protective factor against generalized tonic–clonic seizures (GTCS) and drug-resistant TLE. This study is the first to demonstrate an association of the ADAM10 promoter variants with TLE. In particular, the AA genotype and AC haplotype showed their effects upon GTCS and drug-resistant TLE.
Endogenous Kisspeptin Tone Is a Critical Excitatory Component of Spontaneous GnRH Activity and the GnRH Response to NPY and CART

Background/Aims: Kisspeptin is the major excitatory regulator of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons and is responsible for basal GnRH/LH release and the GnRH/LH surge. Although it is widely assumed, based on mutations in kisspeptin and Kiss1R, that kisspeptin acts to sustain basal GnRH neuronal activity, there have been no studies to investigate whether endogenous basal kisspeptin tone plays a direct role in basal spontaneous GnRH neuronal excitability. It is also of interest to examine possible interactions between endogenous kisspeptin tone and other neuropeptides that have direct effects on GnRH neurons, such as neuropeptide Y (NPY) or cocaine- and amphetamine-regulated transcript (CART), since the activity of all these neuropeptides changes during states of negative energy balance. Methods: Loose cell-attached and whole-cell current patch-clamp recordings were made from GnRH-GFP neurons in hypothalamic slices from female and male rats. Results: Kisspeptin activated GnRH neurons in a concentration-dependent manner with an EC50 of 3.32 ± 0.02 nM. Surprisingly, a kisspeptin antagonist, Peptide 347, suppressed spontaneous activity in GnRH neurons, demonstrating the essential nature of the endogenous kisspeptin tone. Furthermore, inhibition of endogenous kisspeptin tone blocked the direct activation of GnRH cells that occurs in response to antagonism of NPY Y5 receptor or by CART. Conclusions: Our electrophysiology studies suggest that basal endogenous kisspeptin tone is not only essential for spontaneous GnRH neuronal firing, but it is also required for the net excitatory effects of other neuropeptides, such as CART or NPY antagonism, on GnRH neurons. Therefore, endogenous kisspeptin tone could serve as the linchpin in GnRH activation or inhibition.
Re-enabling high-speed caching for LSM-trees

LSM-tree has been widely used in cloud computing systems by Google, Facebook, and Amazon, to achieve high performance for write-intensive workloads. However, in LSM-tree, random key-value queries can experience long latency and low throughput due to the interference from the compaction, a basic operation in the algorithm, to caching. LSM-tree relies on frequent compaction operations to merge data into a sorted structure. After a compaction, the original data are reorganized and written to other locations on the disk. As a result, the cached data are invalidated since their referencing addresses are changed, causing serious performance degradations. We propose dLSM in order to re-enable high-speed caching during intensive writes. dLSM is an LSM-tree with a compaction buffer on the disk, working as a cushion to minimize the cache invalidation caused by compactions. The compaction buffer maintains a series of snapshots of the frequently compacted data, which represent a consistent view of the corresponding data in the underlying LSM-tree. Being updated in a much lower rate than that of compactions, data in the compaction buffer are almost stationary. In dLSM, an object is referenced by the disk address of the corresponding block either in the compaction buffer for frequently compacted data, or in the underlying LSM-tree for infrequently compacted data. Thus, hot objects can be effectively kept in the cache without harmful invalidations. With the help of a small on-disk compaction buffer, dLSM achieves a high query performance by enabling effective caching, while retaining all merits of LSM-tree for write-intensive data processing. We have implemented dLSM based on LevelDB. Our evaluations show that with a standard DRAM cache, dLSM can achieve 5--8x performance improvement over LSM with the same cache on HDD storage.
A palmtop platform for miniaturized dielectric spectroscopy from MHz to GHz

This paper presents a self-sustained, palmtop, measurement platform for miniaturized dielectric spectroscopy (DS) from MHz to GHz. It incorporates a microfluidic DS sensor, a fully integrated transceiver (TRX) IC, a Raspberry Pi as a low-cost, embedded computing module, and a handheld tablet for wireless display and platform operation control. With dimensions of 10cm × 6.5cm × 5.5cm and weight of 295g, the platform is small enough to fit on the palm of a hand, and accurately measures both the real and imaginary parts of the complex relative dielectric permittivity, εr, of a material-under-test (MUT) from ~ 9MHz to 2.4GHz. The platform is capable of differentiating among de-ionized (DI) water, lemonade, red wine, and vodka as primarily-water-based MUTs at four different excitation frequencies of 33MHz, 487MHz, 1.087GHz, and 2.177GHz. Moreover, dielectric readings of the platform with mixtures of DI water and different concentrations of ethanol at 32 frequency points in ~ 10MHz-2.4GHz show excellent agreement with those from bulk-solution reference measurements by a benchtop Agilent 85070E dielectric probe interfaced with a vector network analyzer (VNA) equipment.
Pupillary autonomic denervation with increasing duration of diabetes mellitus

BACKGROUND/AIMS The autonomic pupillary changes in type I and II diabetic patients without clinical evidence of diabetic autonomic neuropathy (DAN) were compared with age matched controls. The relation between pupillary and cardiovascular autonomic function was assessed in the diabetic patients. METHODS A case-control study was performed with diabetics grouped according to type and duration of diabetes. Static infrared pupillography was used to compare mean dark adapted pupil size and mean percentage changes in pupil size with pilocarpine 0.1% and cocaine 4% in the diabetic and control groups. All diabetic patients underwent cardiovascular autonomic function assessment using the Valsalva ratio, the 30:15 ratio, and testing for orthostatic hypotension. RESULTS In total, 72 type I and 69 type II diabetic patients were compared with 120 controls. Mean dark adapted pupil size was significantly smaller in diabetic groups than controls. Except for type I diabetics with disease for less than 5 years, all patient groups had significantly greater mean percentage constriction in pupil size in response to dilute pilocarpine than controls. There was no significant difference between the mean percentage dilatation in response to cocaine 4% in diabetics and controls. A high proportion of patients had normal cardiovascular autonomic function particularly when this was assessed with the Valsalva ratio. CONCLUSIONS Denervation hypersensitivity to dilute pilocarpine is a result of damage to the pupillary parasympathetic supply of diabetic patients. This occurs before the pupillary sympathetic pathway is affected, it can be detected early in the disease, and it may be a possible explanation for the small pupil size seen in diabetic patients. Pupillary autonomic dysfunction occurs before cardiovascular autonomic changes and detection of pupil denervation hypersensitivity to dilute pilocarpine is an inexpensive way to detect early DAN.
European Academy for Childhood Disability (EACD): Recommendations on the definition, diagnosis and intervention of developmental coordination disorder (long version) *

This clinical practice guideline on developmental coordination disorder (CPG-DCD) for German-speaking countries, particularly Germany and Switzerland, is strongly in accordance with the European recommendations of the European Academy of Childhood Disability (EACD) from May 2010 (Brussels) and an international consensus, the International Leeds Consensus (2006).
Search Pruning Conditions for Boolean Optimization

This paper proposes new algorithms for the Binate Covering Problem (BCP), a well-known restriction of Boolean Optimization. Binate Covering finds application in many areas of Computer Science and Engineering. In Artificial Intelligence, BCP can be used for computing minimum-size prime implicants of Boolean functions, of interest in Automated Reasoning and Non-Monotonic Reasoning. Moreover, Binate Covering is an essential modeling tool in Electronic Design Automation. The objectives of the paper are to briefly review branch-and-bound algorithms for BCP, to describe how to apply backtrack search pruning techniques from the Boolean Satisfiability (SAT) domain to BCP, and to illustrate how to strengthen those pruning techniques by exploiting the actual formulation of BCP. Experimental results, obtained on representative instances indicate that the proposed techniques provide significant performance gains for different classes of instances.
Preparation of Symmetric Network PVDF Membranes for Protein Adsorption via Vapor-Induced Phase Separation

Symmetric network poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membranes without a dense skin layer were prepared by vapor-induced phase separation from a PVDF/N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMAc)/water system. The effects of evaporation atmosphere, temperature, and humidity during the preparation of the membranes on their morphologies were investigated by scanning electron microscope (SEM). With low temperature and high humidity, the polymer crystallization mechanism dominated the membrane formation process, and the casting solution formed membranes with symmetric morphologies in the vapor phase containing 0.79% DMAc. The effect of additives on the membrane structure and performance was also investigated. The results of adsorption experiments showed that the binding capacity of bovine serum albumin (BSA) increased with the appearance of a circular network morphology and the decrease of mean pore size of the membrane. With the addition of LiCl to the casting solution, the obtained membrane can adsorb BSA up to 150 μg/cm2. Proteins on sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis gels were successfully electro-blotted onto these PVDF membranes. Compared with commercial membranes, the PVDF membranes prepared in this work were more suitable for protein blotting.
The Effects of Unconsciousness and Emotional Labor on Service Quality: A Case of Flight Attendants

A survey of 250 flight attendants in Taiwan was undertaken in order to examine the relationships between unconsciousness, emotional labor and service quality using the structural equation model (SEM). Results suggest that unconsciousness has negative impact on the emotional expression, interaction and deep acting. But unconsciousness has positive impact on the surface acting and the variety of emotions required to be expressed. The emotional expression, interaction and deep acting can impact upon service quality.
Switching loss characteristics of sequences involving active state division in space vector based PWM

This paper analyzes the switching loss characteristics of sequences involving division of active state duration in space vector based PWM. This analysis, together with the THD performance of the different sequences, reported recently, is used to design new hybrid PWM techniques for induction motor drives, which result in simultaneous reduction in both THD as well as inverter switching losses. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of the proposed PWM techniques.
Offline cleaning of RFID trajectory data

An offline cleaning technique is proposed for translating the readings generated by RFID-tracked moving objects into positions over a map. It consists in a grid-based two-way filtering scheme embedding a sampling strategy for addressing missing detections. The readings are first processed in time order: at each time point t, the positions (i.e., cells of a grid assumed over the map) compatible with the reading at t are filtered according to their reachability from the positions that survived the filtering for the previous time point. Then, the positions that survived the first filtering are re-filtered, applying the same scheme in inverse order. As the two phases proceed, a probability is progressively evaluated for each candidate position at each time point t: at the end, this probability assembles the three probabilities of being the actual position given the past and future positions, and given the reading at t. A sampling procedure is employed at certain steps of the first filtering phase to intelligently reduce the number of cells to be considered as candidate positions at the next steps, as their number can grow dramatically in the presence of consecutive missing detections. The proposed approach is experimentally validated and shown to be efficient and effective in accomplishing its task.