Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 20Gb/s digitally adaptive equalizer/DFE with blind sampling

As data rates increase, the backplane communication systems suffer from serious inter-symbol interference (ISI). Due to different channel lengths, loss, and environment variations, an adaptive equalizer is an attractive and robust circuit to equalize the received data in high-speed data communications. Several tech-niaques are presented for adaptive equalizers. In [1], a spectrum balancing method is presented for an analog equalizer. However, this method is valid only for the random data with fixed data rate. In [5], an eye-opening-monitor (EOM) method adopts a two-dimensional map to detect the signal quality. This EOM method needs a synchronous sampling clock and high-speed comparators. It results in high power consumption and furthermore it requires accurate analog circuits.
Combinatorial control of transcription: the herpes simplex virus VP16-induced complex.

Common features of transcriptional regulation in multicellular organisms are the modular and combinatorial structure of cis-acting DNA sequences and trans-acting proteins. Promoters represent the cis-acting regulatory elements and consist of proximal and basal elements positioned near the transcriptional initiation site and enhancers, which can be located far from the transcriptional initiation site. These elements, especially enhancers, are in turn each composed of multiple modules or transcription factor binding sites that are arranged in combinations that specify a given pattern of transcriptional regulation. Transcription factors are also modular, frequently consisting of transcriptional activation domains, which interact with other proteins in the transcriptional machinery, and DNA-binding domains, which tether the activation domain to the appropriate promoter. The modularity of transcription factors is flexible; activation and DNA-binding modules can be exchanged between transcription factors, thereby creating chimeric molecules with new regulatory properties (Brent and Ptashne 1985).
Structured prediction for urban scene semantic segmentation with geographic context

In this work we address the problem of semantic segmentation of urban remote sensing images into land cover maps. We propose to tackle this task by learning the geographic context of classes and use it to favor or discourage certain spatial configuration of label assignments. For this reason, we learn from training data two spatial priors enforcing different key aspects of the geographical space: local co-occurrence and relative location of land cover classes. We propose to embed these geographic context potentials into a pairwise conditional random field (CRF) which models them jointly with unary potentials from a random forest (RF) classifier. We train the RF on a large set of descriptors which allow to properly account for the class appearance variations induced by the high spatial resolution. We evaluate our approach by an exhaustive experimental comparisons on a set of 20 QuickBird pansharpened multi-spectral images.
Improved power flow control for contactless moving sensor applications

An improved power flow control method for contactless moving sensor applications is proposed. The method allows the design of a system where sensors with different power ratings or a wide range of load variations can be implemented. A phase-controlled variable inductor is used to tune the resonant circuit of the power pickups of an inductively coupled power transfer (ICPT) system according to the actual power requirements of the sensors, thereby, helping to reduce the power losses without affecting the maximum power transfer capacity. Soft switching is achieved in the variable inductor control, and the effect of the equivalent tuning parameters on the power flow is analyzed theoretically. Simulation results show that a significant improvement of the existing controllers is achieved at no load or very lightly loaded conditions.
Double Control Gate Field-Effect Transistor for Area Efficient and Cost Effective Applications

A novel field-effect device for high-density integrated circuits has been developed and manufactured. Numerical device simulations have also been carried out in order to deeply investigate the new structure. Such field-effect device is able to perform simultaneously the functions of two traditional field-effect transistors (e.g. a nMOS and a pMOS), working as one or as the other according to the voltage applied to the gate terminal. Combinational and sequential circuits employing the new technology introduce, with respect to the standard CMOS ones, a drastic reduction of both required devices number and associated parasitic capacitances. This leads to a significant increase of the circuit speed. Furthermore, the IC circuits obtained with these novel devices are fully compatible with standard CMOS technology and fabrication processes.
Regression Calibration in Semiparametric Accelerated Failure Time Models

Summary In large cohort studies, it often happens that some covariates are expensive to measure and hence only measured on a validation set. On the other hand, relatively cheap but error‐prone measurements of the covariates are available for all subjects. Regression calibration (RC) estimation method ( Prentice, 1982 , Biometrika 69, 331–342) is a popular method for analyzing such data and has been applied to the Cox model by Wang et al. (1997, Biometrics 53, 131–145) under normal measurement error and rare disease assumptions. In this article, we consider the RC estimation method for the semiparametric accelerated failure time model with covariates subject to measurement error. Asymptotic properties of the proposed method are investigated under a two‐phase sampling scheme for validation data that are selected via stratified random sampling, resulting in neither independent nor identically distributed observations. We show that the estimates converge to some well‐defined parameters. In particular, unbiased estimation is feasible under additive normal measurement error models for normal covariates and under Berkson error models. The proposed method performs well in finite‐sample simulation studies. We also apply the proposed method to a depression mortality study.
Antibody Conjugates for the Treatment of Cancer

The treatment of leukemia and lymphoma with cytotoxic drug therapy has led to many patients going into long-term remission, and cures have resulted. For solid tumors such as carcinoma of the breast, ovary, colon, prostate and lung, the triad of surgery, radiotherapy and cytotoxic drug therapy is often satisfactory for early disease, but unsatisfactory for metastatic disease. For example, in colon cancer with Duke's A stage (disease confined to the wall of the bowel), 80% of subjects are cured by surgery; by contrast, in Duke's D (the disease has spread to the liver), more than 80% of patients do not survive 6 months beyond the time of diagnosis and little can be done with chemotherapy, although the combination of levamisole and 5-fluorouracil may be of marginal benefit (Moertel et al. 1990). Clearly, new modes of therapy are necessary and in this light the use of antibodies to target drugs, toxins, enzymes or isotopes to tumors is under examination. The conclusions to be reached on this form of "immunoconjugate" therapy in this review arc: a) murine antibodies alone are usually without effect in patients, it therefore follows that, b) antibodies have to be "armed" with either drugs, toxins, isotopes or enzymes to form immunoconjugates for effective therapy; c) treatment with immunoconjugates could be beneficial, as they are usually non-toxic in Phase I/II studies, but treatment has to be curtailed because of the onset of human anti-mouse antibodies (HAMA). This problem can be overcome by, d) the use of chimaeric, humanized or totally human antibodies. At this time, many laboratories are now engaged in a new phase of immunoconjugate development, engineering less immunogenic antibodies, and future trials and will build on the principles elaborated with murine monoclonal antibody-itnmunoconjugates. Thus, a whole new round of Phase I/II and hopefully Phase III clinical studies will be commencing with engineered antibodies, with or without the conjugation of a toxic moiety. This review will focus predominantly on the use of murine monoclonal antibodies in immunoconjugates formed particularly with cytotoxic
A Novel Variable-Length Meander-Line-Coil EMAT for Side Lobe Suppression

Typically, meander-line-coil electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) with wires of a constant length are used to generate Rayleigh waves. However, significant side lobes are observed in this design. In this paper, a novel meander-line-coil with variable-length wires is proposed to suppress side lobes of the Rayleigh waves' beam. This novel EMAT is simulated by using a wholly analytical method, which involves the coupling of an analytical EM model and an analytical US model to generate the radiation pattern of Rayleigh waves. The Rayleigh waves' beam directivity of this novel variable-length meander-line-coil (VLMLC) is quantitatively analyzed by the half power beamwidth and the sidelobe level; the effect of the length step on the Rayleigh waves' beam directivity is discussed. A 50-mm VLMLC with a length step of 8 mm is fabricated and experimentally analyzed; experimental results showed that novel VLMLCs are capable of suppressing side lobes of the Rayleigh waves' beam, which is not achievable by the conventional meander-line-coil. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no report so far of the VLMLCs EMAT.
Digital Model Planning and Computerized Fabrication of Orthognathic Surgery Wafers

Conventional orthognathic wafers are made by a process involving manual movement of stone dental models and acrylic laboratory fabrication. In addition, a facebow record and semi-adjustable articulator system are required for maxillary osteotomy cases. This paper introduces a novel process of producing both intermediate and final orthognathic surgical wafers using a combination of computerized digital model simulation and three-dimensional print fabrication, without the need for either a facebow record or the additional ionizing radiation exposure associated with cone beam computerized tomography.
Prospective brain imaging evaluation of children with sickle cell trait: initial observations.

PURPOSE To determine whether sickle cell trait (hemoglobin AS) is associated with abnormalities in the brain of asymptomatic children. MATERIALS AND METHODS Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and MR angiography were performed prospectively in 26 siblings (eight girls, 18 boys; mean age, 10.5 years) of patients with sickle cell disease. Two neuroradiologists, blinded as to whether a child had hemoglobin AS or AA, reviewed images obtained in siblings. With MR imaging, lacunae, loss of white matter volume, encephalomalacia, or leukoencephalopathy was identified. With MR angiography, arterial stenosis, occlusion, or tortuosity was identified. Images with definite or possible abnormalities were mixed with randomly selected images and were referred to a third neuroradiologist for a completely blinded review. In cases in which all neuroradiologists concurred, a score was assigned that indicated the sibling had an abnormality. MR angiographic findings were assigned a score for tortuosity with a new quantitative scale. RESULTS Among 26 siblings screened, 21 children had sickle cell trait. Among these 21 children, two had mild abnormalities at MR imaging (sample prevalence rate, 10% [95% CI: 1%, 29%]), and four had arterial tortuosity (sample prevalence rate, 19% [95% CI: 5%, 42%]). When children with sickle cell trait were compared with 31 control subjects without the trait, arterial tortuosity was significantly more common in children with sickle cell trait (P =.014). Among children with sickle cell trait, percentage of hemoglobin S was significantly greater in children who had tortuosity than percentage of hemoglobin S in children who had normal blood vessels at MR angiography (P <.03). CONCLUSION Findings suggest that greater percentage of hemoglobin S is associated with mild vasculopathy. This vasculopathy may explain some of the excess risk of stroke among African Americans.
Complete response to carboplatin, gemcitabine, and paclitaxel in a patient with advanced metastatic renal medullary carcinoma

Renal medullary carcinoma (RMC) is a rare and aggressive malignancy seen primarily in patients with sickle‐cell trait. We report a complete response to carboplatin, paclitaxel, and gemcitabine in a patient with advanced metastatic RMC. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2010;55:1217–1220. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Smile Detection in the Wild Based on Transfer Learning

Smile detection from unconstrained facial images is a specialized and challenging problem. As one of the most informative expressions, smiles convey basic underlying emotions, such as happiness and satisfaction, and leads to multiple applications, such as human behavior analysis and interactive controlling. Compared to the size of databases for face recognition, far less labeled data is available for training smile detection systems. This paper proposes an efficient transfer learning-based smile detection approach to leverage the large amount of labeled data from face recognition datasets and to alleviate overfitting on smile detection. A well-trained deep face recognition model is explored and fine-tuned for smile detection in the wild, unlike previous works which use either hand-engineered features or train deep convolutional networks from scratch. Three different models are built as a result of fine-tuning the face recognition model with different inputs, including aligned, unaligned and grayscale images generated from the GENKI-4K dataset. Experiments show that the proposed approach achieves improved state-of-the-art performance. Robustness of the model to noise and blur artifacts is also evaluated in this paper.
Estimating the Impact of Vaccination on Acute Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Infections

ABSTRACT The dynamics of HIV infection have been studied in humans and in a variety of animal models. The standard model of infection has been used to estimate the basic reproductive ratio of the virus, calculated from the growth rate of virus in acute infection. This method has not been useful in studying the effects of vaccination, since, for the vaccines developed so far, early growth rates of virus do not differ between control and vaccinated animals. Here, we use the standard model of viral dynamics to derive the reproductive ratio from the peak viral load and nadir of target cell numbers in acute infection. We apply this method to data from studies of vaccination in SHIV and SIV infection and demonstrate that vaccination can reduce the reproductive ratio by 2.3- and 2-fold, respectively. This method allows the comparison of vaccination efficacies among different viral strains and animal models in vivo.
27 Analysis of DNA deformations in transcription factor–DNA complexes

27 Analysis of DNA deformations in transcription factor–DNA complexes Jared Sagendorf*, Helen M. Berman and Remo Rohs Molecular and Computational Biology Program, Department of Biological Sciences, Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA; Center for Integrative Proteomics Research, Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA *Email: sagendor@usc.edu
Predictive Functional Controller design for pneumatic actuator with stiffness characteristic

This paper presents a model and controller design for a pneumatic actuator system. Three control strategies of position, force and compliance control are proposed. From the compliance control, stiffness characteristic of the pneumatic actuator will be presented in real-time system. Model of the pneumatic actuator system (transfer function) is obtained from System Identification (SI) method. Next, Predictive Functional Control (PFC) with observer design is selected as the control strategy for the pneumatic system. Performance assessment of the controller is performed in MATLAB and validated through real-time experiment. Result shows that the PFC controller is adapted to the system and able to control successfully in both simulation and experiment.
The Effect of Calcium Channel Blockers on Cerebral Oxygenation During Tracheal Extubation

Calcium channel blockers are effective in stabilizing systemic hemodynamics during tracheal extubation. However, they may increase cerebral blood flow (CBF) during tracheal extubation because of cerebral vasodilation, even if systemic arterial blood pressure decreases. In this study, we observed changes in cerebral oxygenation during tracheal extubation by using near-infrared spectroscopy and evaluated the effect of nicardipine and diltiazem on the resultant changes. We studied 45 women undergoing elective gynecologic surgery. After surgery, the patients were randomly allocated to three groups (n = 15 each): saline (control), 0.02 mg/kg nicardipine, and 0.2 mg/kg diltiazem. After 2 min, we started to aspirate secretions for 2 min and then, extubated the trachea. Changes in cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin (Hbo2) and deoxygenated hemoglobin were measured during the extubation procedure for 9 min after drug treatment. Systemic hemodynamics, including mean arterial blood pressure, heart rate, end-tidal Co2, end-tidal sevoflurane concentration, and peripheral arterial oxygen saturation were also monitored. During extubation, Hbo2 increased significantly, presumably caused by the increase in CBF. Changes in deoxygenated hemoglobin were minimal. Compared with the control, nicardipine and diltiazem significantly inhibited the increase in mean arterial blood pressure. On the contrary, they significantly enhanced the increase in Hbo2. In conclusion, calcium channel blockers may increase CBF during extubation, even if these drugs stabilize systemic hemodynamics. Implications This study is a preliminary report evaluating the changes in cerebral oxygenation during the tracheal extubation. Cerebral oxygenated hemoglobin increased significantly, presumably caused by the increase in cerebral blood flow during extubation. In addition, these changes were enhanced by calcium channel blockers.
Durable Distance Vector Multicasting Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel on-demand multicasting algorithm, "durable distance vector multicasting (DDVM)," for mobile ad hoc network (MANET). DDVM has a smaller routing-control overhead than link state routing (LSR) and provides a high delivery ratio for MANET with high mobility by adapting to dynamic topological changes. Furthermore, DDVM is energy-efficient in terms of "packet transmission efficiency. " This is achieved by adding "combined path-durability" statistic into the routing-control information of distance vector routing (DVR). The routing-path duration statistic is computed in a fully distributed manner at each node in the network based on only local information from neighbour nodes. We show by simulation studies the effectiveness of DDVM compared with on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP)
Investigation of single-trap-induced random telegraph noise for tunnel FET based devices, 8T SRAM cell, and sense amplifiers

This paper analyzes the impacts of Random Telegraph Noise (RTN) caused by a single acceptor-type trap on Tunnel FET (TFET) based devices, 8T SRAM cell and sense amplifiers. 3D atomistic TCAD simulations accounting for the impact of localized/negatively-charged trap are utilized to assess the dependence of RTN amplitude (ΔID/ID) on trap location and device geometry. Our results indicate that significant RTN impact occurs for trap located near the tunneling junction. The device design strategies (thinner EOT, Wfin and longer Leff) to improve TFET device characteristics are found to increase the susceptibility to RTN. Furthermore, TFET-based standard 8T SRAM cell and several commonly used sense amplifiers including Current Latch Sense Amplifier (CLSA), Voltage Latch Sense Amplifier (VLSA), and single-ended large-signal inverter sense amplifier are examined using atomistic 3D TCAD mixed-mode simulations. The presence of RTN is shown to cause extra ~16% variations in cell stability (at Vdd = 0.3V) and additional ~80mV variation in offset voltage for sense amplifiers at Vdd = 0.5V.
Normal apoptosis levels in mice expressing one α7 nicotinic receptor null and one L250T mutant allele

The α7 nicotinic receptor (nAChR) is a ligand-gated ion channel mediating cholinergic transmission throughout the nervous system. To further characterize the function of this receptor, we generated mice expressing the α7 L250T nAChR mutation and demonstrated that homozygous (T/T) L250T mice die within 24 h of birth and display extensive apoptosis and abnormal layering within their cortex. We now demonstrate that mice with one α7 null and one L250T allele (−/T) show little apoptosis and normal development of their cortex yet exhibit the same lethal phenotype as T/T mice. Furthermore, L250T mice show normal levels of apoptosis in other nervous system regions expressing α7 nAChRs. These results suggest that apoptosis is not the cause of death for L250T neonatal mice.
Maternal folate and other vitamin supplementation during pregnancy and risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in the offspring

The Australian Study of Causes of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Children (Aus‐ALL) was designed to test the hypothesis, raised by a previous Western Australian study, that maternal folic acid supplementation during pregnancy might reduce the risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Aus‐ALL was a national, population‐based, multicenter case–control study that prospectively recruited 416 cases and 1,361 controls between 2003 and 2007. Detailed information was collected about maternal use of folic acid and other vitamin supplements before and during the index pregnancy. Data were analyzed using logistic regression, adjusting for matching factors and potential confounders. A meta‐analysis with the results of previous studies of folic acid supplementation was also conducted. We found weak evidence of a protective effect of maternal folate supplementation before pregnancy against risk of childhood ALL, but no evidence for a protective effect of its use during pregnancy. A meta‐analysis including this and 2 other studies, but not the study that raised the hypothesis, also found little evidence that folate supplementation during pregnancy protects against ALL: the summary odds ratios (ORs) for folate supplementation were 1.06 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.77–1.48] with reference to no folate supplementation and 1.02 (95% CI: 0.86–1.20) with reference to no vitamin supplementation. For vitamin supplementation in general, the summary OR from a meta‐analysis of 5 studies—including Aus‐ALL—was 0.83 (95% CI: 0.73–0.94). Vitamin supplementation in pregnancy may protect against childhood ALL, but this effect is unlikely to be large or, if real, specifically due to folate.
of the 23 rd Annual EMBS International Conference , October 25-28 , Istanbul , Turkey A HYDROPHOBICITY BASED NEURAL NETWORK METHOD FOR PREDICTING TRANSMEMBRANE SEGMENTS IN PROTEIN SEQUENCES

Transmembrane proteins play vital roles in living cells. The difficulties in determining the topology of transmembrane protein experimentally and the increasing amino acid sequence data from genome projects provide great demand for computational methods to predict the region of transmembrane segments in protein sequences. A hydrophobicity based supervised learning vector quantiztion neural network prediction method is presented. The prediction accuracy is above 90% and comparable to existing methods. Keywordslearning vector quantization (LVQ), hydrophobicity, transmembrane(TM)