Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictive sensing in analog-to-digital converters for biomedical applications

This paper presents a predictive sensing-based ADC architecture that has improved energy efficiency, compared to a conventional SAR ADC, by exploiting the predictable properties of biomedical signals, such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. By predicting the next input sample, based on previous samples, the conversion is performed in a subrange of the full scale. This results in energy savings compared to the SAR ADC, which always performs the conversion in the full scale. Two search algorithms to perform the conversion in the subrange will be presented and analyzed. For moderate resolutions between 6 and 10 bit, up to 40–50% improvement in terms of energy consumption is obtained, while 25 to 40% for higher resolutions. To validate the concept, a 12-bit predictive ADC, implementing the restricted binary search algorithm with 0-th order prediction, is designed and simulated in 130nm UMC CMOS technology. The simulation results show an improvement in the average energy consumption per conversion, compared to a conventional SAR ADC with the same resolution, which is in the range of 30–40%.
Spatiotemporal Analysis to Observe Gender Based Check-In Behavior by Using Social Media Big Data: A Case Study of Guangzhou, China

In a location-based social network, users socialize with each other by sharing their current location in the form of “check-in,” which allows users to reveal the current places they visit as part of their social interaction. Understanding this human check-in phenomenon in space and time on location based social network (LBSN) datasets, which is also called “check-in behavior,” can archive the day-to-day activity patterns, usage behaviors toward social media, and presents spatiotemporal evidence of users’ daily routines. It also provides a wide range of opportunities to observe (i.e., mobility, urban activities, defining city boundary, and community problems in a city). In representing human check-in behavior, these LBSN datasets do not reflect the real-world events due to certain statistical biases (i.e., gender prejudice, a low frequency in sampling, and location type prejudice). However, LBSN data is primarily considered a supplement to traditional data sources (i.e., survey, census) and can be used to observe human check-in behavior within a city. Different interpretations are used elusively for the term “check-in behavior,” which makes it difficult to identify studies on human check-in behavior based on LBSN using the Weibo dataset. The primary objective of this research is to explore human check-in behavior by male and female users in Guangzhou, China toward using Chinese microblog Sina Weibo (referred to as “Weibo”), which is missing in the existing literature. Kernel density estimation (KDE) is utilized to explore the spatiotemporal distribution geographically and weighted regression (GWR) method was applied to observe the relationship between check-in and districts with a focus on gender during weekdays and weekend. Lastly, the standard deviational ellipse (SDE) analysis is used to systematically analyze the orientation, direction, spatiotemporal expansion trends and the differences in check-in distribution in Guangzhou, China. The results of this study show that LBSN is a reliable source of data to observe human check-in behavior in space and time within a specified geographic area. Furthermore, it shows that female users are more likely to use social media as compared to male users. The human check-in behavior patterns for social media network usage by gender seems to be slightly different during weekdays and weekend.
Gender difference and genetic variance in lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 is associated with mortality

Cardiovascular diseases are an important health resource problem and studies have shown a genetic association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and cardiovascular diseases. According to the literature, lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP1) is associated with coronary artery disease. The aim of the present study was to evaluate a possible association between different genotypes of LRP1 and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality from a gender perspective. In the present study, 489 elderly community-living people were invited to participate. Clinical examination, echocardiography and blood sampling including SNP analyses of LRP1 (rs1466535) were performed, including the T/T, C/T and C/C genotypes, and the participants were followed for 6.7 years. During the follow-up period, 116 (24%) all-cause and 75 (15%) cardiovascular deaths were registered. In the female population, the LRP1 of the T/T or C/T genotype exhibited a 5.6-fold increased risk of cardiovascular mortality and a 2.8-fold increased risk of all-cause mortality compared with the C/C genotype. No such genotype differences could be seen in the male population. Gender differences could be seen regarding the risk of mortality in the different genotypes. Females with the LRP1 T/T or C/T genotypes exhibited a significantly increased risk of both all-cause and cardiovascular mortality compared with the C/C genotypes. Therefore, more individualized cardiovascular prevention and treatment should be prioritized. However, since this was a small study, the observations should only be regarded as hypothesis-generating.
Reducing substrate noise coupling in a 3D-PICS Integrated Passive Device by localized P+ guard rings

This paper presents an original concept of a P+ guard ring realized in a 300μm depth High Resistivity Silicon Substrate (HRS) in order to reduce the substrate noise coupling in a 3D-PICS Integrated Passive Device technology. Guard rings have been designed to be a reliable and efficient protection against noise signals propagation. Case study presented in this work illustrates its significant role. In this paper, a 3D-PICS IPD test chip was studied as a first passive part prototype of a System-In-Package chip in combination with RF transceiver operating in the ISM band (863-870 MHz). Various configurations of the passive chip layout (including implementation of guard rings) have been characterized by Direct Power Injection. 3D-PICS electrical performances deduced from two-ports S-parameters are reported, as well as the guard rings efficiency measurements extracted from these S-parameters. Coupling isolation performances of the new integrated PICS components are found satisfactory.
SRNPD: Spatial rendering network for pencil drawing stylization

Pencil drawing is a simple yet effective way to depict what people see by clearly presenting details of the scene. Existing methods usually extract strokes of the input image and adjust the result image tone to make it look like a pencil drawing. However, they do not consider the quality of the stroke image and the geometry information of lines in the stroke image, which unavoidably results in the violation of original essential structures and in a flatten pencil drawing with unrealistic appearance. We put forward a spatial rendering network for pencil drawing stylization. Spatial stroke images are extracted from the image pyramid by a single‐shot bottom‐up neural network to improve the quality of these stroke images. Unlike the former tone adjustment–based methods, we analyze perceptual cues of strokes at different stroke image levels and use the obtained geometry information to constrain the stroke shading procedure. The final pencil drawing result is achieved by the stroke shading fusion of different levels' shading results. The effectiveness of our spatial rendering network for pencil drawing stylization is demonstrated by an ablation study, comparison to the state of the art, and a user study.
Surviving the Web

In this article, we survey the most common attacks against web sessions, that is, attacks that target honest web browser users establishing an authenticated session with a trusted web application. We then review existing security solutions that prevent or mitigate the different attacks by evaluating them along four different axes: protection, usability, compatibility, and ease of deployment. We also assess several defensive solutions that aim at providing robust safeguards against multiple attacks. Based on this survey, we identify five guidelines that, to different extents, have been taken into account by the designers of the different proposals we reviewed. We believe that these guidelines can be helpful for the development of innovative solutions approaching web security in a more systematic and comprehensive way.
CRISPRFinder: a web tool to identify clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) constitute a particular family of tandem repeats found in a wide range of prokaryotic genomes (half of eubacteria and almost all archaea). They consist of a succession of highly conserved regions (DR) varying in size from 23 to 47 bp, separated by similarly sized unique sequences (spacer) of usually viral origin. A CRISPR cluster is flanked on one side by an AT-rich sequence called the leader and assumed to be a transcriptional promoter. Recent studies suggest that this structure represents a putative RNA-interference-based immune system. Here we describe CRISPRFinder, a web service offering tools to (i) detect CRISPRs including the shortest ones (one or two motifs); (ii) define DRs and extract spacers; (iii) get the flanking sequences to determine the leader; (iv) blast spacers against Genbank database and (v) check if the DR is found elsewhere in prokaryotic sequenced genomes. CRISPRFinder is freely accessible at http://crispr.u-psud.fr/Server/CRISPRfinder.php.
The complete mitochondrial genome and phylogenetic analysis of Fusinus longicaudus (Gastropoda: Fasciolariidae)

Abstract We first determined the complete mitochondrial genome of Fusinus longicaudus (Gastropoda: Fasciolariidae). The circular mitochondrial genome is 16,319 bp in length, consisting of 13 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, and two ribosomal RNA genes. The nucleotide composition is 14.7% of C, 15.9% of G, 38.9% of T, and 30.5% of A. The control region with the length of 1029 bp is between tRNAPhe and COX3 genes. In 13 protein-coding genes, the nad4 gene starts with ATT, the other eleven genes start with ATG. For the stop codon, atp6, nad4l, nad5 and nad6 end with TAG, other 9 genes end with TAA. The phylogenetic tree was constructed based on 13 protein-coding genes of F. longicaudus and other 13 Neogastropoda species, Perna viridis as outgroup using the Neighbor-joining method, the result showed that F. longicaudus is most closely related to the Buccinidae. The mitochondrial genome would be helpful for the study of population genetic and phylogenetic analysis of the family Fasciolariidae.
Improved nonlinear model for electrode voltage-current relationship for more consistent online battery system identification

An improved nonlinear model for the electrode voltage-current relationship for online battery system identification is proposed. In contrast with the traditional linear-circuit model, the new approach employs a more accurate model of the battery electrode nonlinear steady-state voltage drop based on the Butler-Volmer equation. The new form uses an inverse hyperbolic sine approximation for the Butler-Volmer equation. Kalman filter-based system identification is proposed for determining the model parameters based on the measured voltage and current. Both models have been implemented for lead-acid batteries and exercised using test data from a Corbin Sparrow electric vehicle. A comparison of predictions for the two models demonstrates the improvements that can be achieved using the new nonlinear model. The results include improved battery voltage predictions that provide the basis for more accurate state-of-function (SOF) readings.
A novel selection based hybrid spectrum sensing technique for cognitive radios

Cognitive radio is a solution for the spectral crowding problem by introducing opportunistic usage of frequency bands that are not occupied by licensed primary users. Spectrum sensing is the most important task of cognitive radio which identifies the existence of the primary users in the frequency band under consideration. Energy detector (ED) is one of the simplest and basic methods for spectrum sensing but it suffers from noise uncertainty problem. Covariance Absolute Value (CAV) is another spectrum sensing method which is based on the statistical covariance of the received signal but it works well only if the signal samples are highly correlated. Hence another novel selection based hybrid spectrum sensing method is proposed which combines the advantages of both the methods. Simulation results prove that the novel selection based spectrum sensing method outperforms both the energy detection as well as CAV method and identifies the spectrum hole irrespective of the nature of the signal under consideration.
A transformer inrush reduction technique for low-voltage ride-through operation of renewable converters

The low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) capability has become one of the most important issues since more renewable and distributed energy resource are installed in the grid. The LVRT capability means the converter should remain grid-connected and inject required current to support gird voltage. On the other hand, the sudden reduction of grid voltage may result in magnetic flux deviation in the step-up transformer as grid voltage sag occurs. The deviation of magnetic decays very slowly due to the high efficiency transformer, and it would lead to inrush current as grid voltage restores to normal level. This paper proposes a method to mitigate the magnetic flux deviation and limit the peak current without excelling the current capability of semiconductor devices by using a close-loop current control during LVRT operation. The proposed method can manage the converter's output peak current and reduce the risk of inrush current as grid voltage restores.
Investigation of the Structure and Dynamics of Multiferroic Systems by Inelastic Neutron Scattering and Complementary Methods

The aim of this thesis is the characterization of three different multiferroic materials. The first substance is MnWO4 whose magnetic phase transition temperatures can be increased when tungsten atoms are substituted by molybdenum. However, it is unclear how far the transition temperatures can be increased. The first part of the thesis therefore aims at the determination of the maximum doping concentration by x ray powder diffraction and the maximum transition temperature by impedance spectroscopy. It is indeed possible to synthesize a metastable wolframite phase with up to 65 % molybdenum, but these samples decompose during sintering as preparation for impedance measurements. The phase transition temperatures of samples with unusual high Mo content could therefore not be determined. This decomposition of sintered samples indicates that the thermodynamic ground state at high temperatures is a miscibility gap, which allows to solve 30 % molybdenum in the wolframite phase. In the second part of this thesis, magnon spectra were measured by inelastic neutron scattering in the multiferroic phase of CuO as well as in the paraelectric, antiferromagnetic phase for comparison. This research is motivated by the recent discovery of an electromagnon in the multiferroic phase. Two distinct excitations are identified in this phase. The first one is a phason mode where the spins rotate inside the cycloidal plane and that has no spin gap within the instrumental resolution. The second mode might indeed be the electromagnon, because the determined eigenvector matches the predicted displacement pattern. Furthermore, the spin gap of this second mode has exactly the same value as the published excitation energy of the electromagnon. The aim of the third part of this thesis is to answer the question whether Bi2Mn4O10 is multiferroic. Therefore, the dielectric permittivity of Bi2Mn4O10 was measured in a range of temperatures above and below TN. There is a small but well defined peak-like anomaly along the b-axis, which is evidence for the onset of ferroelectricity. The multiferroic coupling mechanism that is proposed to induce ferroelectricity in R2Mn4O10 involves the displacement of Mn-atoms. In order to answer the question if this mechanism can also be applied to Bi2Mn4O10, all elastic constants were determined in the multiferroic phase as well as at room temperature for comparison. There is, however, no observable temperature-dependent anomaly.
Supporting dynamic process specifications using communication based processes

In this paper, we introduce the M-Trans system, which is able to record the specification of the design process for the communicative process, which is designed in a discussion and is specified incompletely, to create the communicative process according to the specification, and to support dynamic process specifications utilizing the record of executed communicative process. The system is based on the model that provides integrated specification of a process and communication. The execution of the communicative process may be performed in parallel with the design process, and the design process and the implementation may have interactions for coordination. Moreover, we present a method for verifying consistency between the communicative process and its specification. Managing the communicative process is important since it realizes adaptation to unexpected situations, including exception handling and dynamic re-composition of a process in WFMS.
Integrated Systems for Control and Management of Downy Brome (Bromus tectorum) in Cropland

Downy brome (Bromus tectorum L. # BROTE) may be a troublesome weed in winter small grains, perennial legumes, perennial grasses grown for seed, and orchards. In Nebraska, winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) yields have been depressed 30% by downy brome populations of 11 to 22 plants/m2 (8). In Oregon, downy brome densities of 108 to 160 and 538 plants/m2 reduced yields by 40 and 92%, respectively (22, 23). In Idaho, wheat yields were depressed 20 to 40% with 55 to 110 plants/m2 (18). Downy brome has also been shown to lower yields and quality of hay from infested fields of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) (29). In perennial grass seed fields, downy brome may cause a serious seed quality problem (16). Some grass seed lots have contained as much as 50 to 75% downy brome seed.
Polypharmacy and predictors of high level polypharmacy in patients with diabetic nephropathy in a tertiary care hospital

Background: Diabetic Nephropathy (DN) is the leading cause of end-stage renal disease. Polypharmacy is common in DN as pharmacotherapy is complex with multimorbidity. The objectives of the study are to assess the prevalence and patterns of polypharmacy and to determine the predictors of high-level polypharmacy among patients with diabetic nephropathy in a tertiary care hospital.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted among adult patients with DN visiting nephrology outpatient department (March 2015 to August 2016). Data on demography, disease characteristics, and treatments were collected. Baseline data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Categorical variables and predictors of polypharmacy were analysed using Chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression respectively.Results: Mean age of patients was 58.14±10.44 years with male preponderance (72.7%). A majority of patients had comorbidities (76%). Hypertension was the most common co-morbidity (98.7%). Majority (64%) were in DN stage 4-5 and 58% of patients were undergoing hemodialysis. Mean number of drugs prescribed was 9.25±2.5. Anti-hypertensives (95.3%) were the major drug class prescribed. Polypharmacy (>5 drugs) was noticed in 95.3% patients and high-level polypharmacy (>10 drugs) in 46.7%. Presence of ≥3 comorbidities is a significant predictor of high-level polypharmacy (OR-1.414: 95% CI (1.008, 1.982), p=0.045). Conclusions: Polypharmacy was noticed in a majority of patients with high level polypharmacy in more than one third of patients with DN. Presence of ≥3 comorbidities were found to be significant predictor of high-level polypharmacy.
Analysis and Design of a Hybrid Dickson Switched Capacitor Converter for Intermediate Bus Converter Applications

By 2020 it is predicted that 1/3 of all data will pass through the cloud. With society’s growing dependency on data, it is vital that data centers, the cloud’s physical house of content, operate with optimal energy performance to reduce operating costs. Unfortunately, today’s data centers are inefficient, both economically and environmentally. This has led to an increase in demand for energy-efficient servers. One opportunity for improved efficiency is in the power delivery architecture which delivers power from the grid to the motherboard. In this dissertation, the main focus is the intermediate bus converter (IBC), used for the intermediate conversion, typically 48-12V/5V, in server power supplies. The IBC requires compact design so that it can be placed as close to the load as possible to enable more space for computing power and high efficiency to reduce the need for external cooling. Most commonly used converter topologies today include expensive bulky magnetics hindering the converter’s power density. Furthermore, high output current of an IBC makes the efficiency very sensitive to any resistance, such as magnetic parasitic resistance or PCB trace resistance. In this work, analytical loss models are used to review the advantages and disadvantages of frequently used IBC topologies such as the phase-shifted full bridge and LLC. The Hybrid Dickson Switched Capacitor (HDSC) topology is also analyzed. The HDSC’s high step-down conversion ratio and low dependence on magnetics due to the reduced applied volt-seconds, provides a new opportunity for applications such as the intermediate bus converter. The HDSC designs the on-time of devices in order to achieve soft-charging between flying capacitors. Other advantages of the HDSC include low switch stress, small magnetics and adjustable duty cycle for voltage regulation. Challenges, such as minimizing parasitic inductance and resistance between flying capacitors, are addressed and recommendations for PCB layout are provided. In this paper, a 4:1 24-5V and 8:1 48-5V,
EXPLOITATION OF SPIRITUAL TOURISM IN THUA THIEN HUE PROVINCE, VIETNAM: A PERSPECTIVE FROM TOURISM COMPANIES

Abstract: This study captures the current problems of spiritual tourism exploitation in Thua Thien Hue province from tourism providers’ perspective. The author uses in-depth interviews with 6 respondents who are representatives of the local’s tourism companies. The analysis of the data indicates that the great potential of the local’s spiritual tourism can be developed via values spiritual orientations including Royal-based value; folk culture-based value; religion-based value, and historical heritage sites-based value. Besides, the author also clarifies the current problematic status of deploying spiritual tourism in this area. The findings of the study will be both a guideline to practitioners and a useful reference to researchers in local’s spiritual tourism development.Keywords: exploitation, spiritual tourism, Thua Thien Hue