Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Sub-100mV Ultra-Low Voltage Level-Shifter Using Current Limiting Cross-Coupled Technique for Wide-Range Conversion to I/O Voltage

In this paper, a sub-100mV ultra-low-voltage level-shifter for wide-range voltage conversion to I/O voltage is presented. The level-shifter uses a current limiting diode-connected transistor with cross-coupled transistor structure to reduce the minimum input voltage down to 100mV while covering a wide output voltage range up to I/O supply voltage (3V). We propose an improved split-control output buffer to reduce the static current from <italic>VDDH</italic> to <italic>VSS</italic>. The level-shifter is implemented using X-FAB 180nm HV CMOS process. The post-layout simulations show that the proposed structure achieves an average propagation delay of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$7.57~\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> s with a power consumption of 3.43nW when the supply voltages <italic>VDDL</italic>, <italic>VDDH</italic>, and input frequency are 100mV, 3V, and 1kHz, respectively. The design occupies <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$182.46~\mu ~\text{m}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> silicon area with a static power consumption of 3nW when <italic>VDDL</italic> and <italic>VDDH</italic> are 100mV and 3V, respectively, which is suitable for low power applications.
Correlated and decoupled evolution of adult and larval body size in frogs

The majority of animal species have complex life cycles, in which larval stages may have very different morphologies and ecologies relative to adults. Anurans (frogs) provide a particularly striking example. However, the extent to which larval and adult morphologies (e.g. body size) are correlated among species has not been broadly tested in any major group. Recent studies have suggested that larval and adult morphology are evolutionarily decoupled in frogs, but focused within families and did not compare the evolution of body sizes. Here, we test for correlated evolution of adult and larval body size across 542 species from 42 families, including most families with a tadpole stage. We find strong phylogenetic signal in larval and adult body sizes, and find that both traits are significantly and positively related across frogs. However, this relationship varies dramatically among clades, from strongly positive to weakly negative. Furthermore, rates of evolution for both variables are largely decoupled among clades. Thus, some clades have high rates of adult body-size evolution but low rates in tadpole body size (and vice versa). Overall, we show for the first time that body sizes are generally related between adult and larval stages across a major group, even as evolutionary rates of larval and adult size are largely decoupled among species and clades.
A Survey on Protocols for Internet of Things

At present optimization of protocols is a major problem in IoT communication platforms and there are many efforts on the research, analysis and discovery of new solutions related to smart city and high density sensor networks that are used as part of the IoT concept. In addition, other researches make IoT performance lighter and continue to develop it for years. This paper provides a classification of IoT protocols available since architecture IoT was first discovered up to the current trend protocol, there are advantages and disadvantages to the IoT domain. This paper also identifies the main problem protocols that are available in the IoT domain.
Effective cache replacement policy for packet processing cache

Owing to the explosive increase in Internet traffic, increasing the throughput and energy efficiency of core routers is an important issue for future internet. Accessing the ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) in a core router can significantly degrade its throughput and energy efficiency owing to its low operating frequency and power consuming operations. To improve the throughput and energy‐efficiency of core routers, packet processing caches (PPCs) can be potentially used. PPCs can reduce the number of TCAM accesses by storing the TCAM lookup results in a fast and low‐energy cache memory and reusing them to process subsequent packets. To enhance the PPC performance, it is important to reduce the number of PPC misses. However, the PPC miss rate of the state‐of‐the‐art PPC is still high owing to its small capacity. In this study, we propose an effective cache replacement policy, called elevator cache (ELC) to improve the PPC miss rate. Our simulation results showed that the 8‐way ELC, which can be implementable at low hardware cost, reduced the number of PPC misses by 17.1% and 5.67% in comparison to the 4‐way least recently used (LRU) and the 4‐way ELC, respectively. Consequently, it was found that the 8‐way ELC can achieve a 1.21 times higher throughput (560 Gbps) while consuming 83% energy in comparison to conventional PPCs.
When the Threat is Stronger than the Execution: Trade and Welfare Under Oligopoly

We compare trade liberalization under Cournot and Bertrand competition in reciprocal markets. In both cases, the critical level of trade costs below which the possibility of trade affects the domestic firm’s behavior is the same; trade liberalization increases trade volume monotonically; and welfare is U-shaped under reasonable conditions. However, welfare is typically greater under Bertrand competition; for higher trade costs the volume of trade is greater under Cournot competition, implying a “van-der-Rohe Region” in parameter space; and, for even higher trade costs, there exists a “Nimzowitsch Region”, where welfare is higher under Bertrand competition even though no trade takes place.
Isolation of Microsatellite Markers in the Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio)

A partial common carp genomic library was constructed.45 positive clones were isolated from screening about 2000 clones of the genomic library with a (CA) 15 probe labelled at the 5' end with γ 32 P ATP.Sequencing of these clones was performed with automated sequencer,and 22 microsatellites were isolated.17 primers were designed based on unique sequences flanking each motif with the software Primer3.PCR on Cyprinus carpio haematopterus was carried out with these primers,and all gave expected bands.Annealing temperature of these primers was between 50℃ and 53℃.
Acquisition and Processing of Navigation Parameters

This work presents an approach of orientation in terms of geographical coordinates to a system of interest. It is performed by the application of acquisition algorithm of positioning message provided by the global positioning system. The aim is to implement an approach to extract the appropriate navigation parameters out of the navigation message and specify geographic system design to apply this approach. It is verified by the field experiments carried out in the area of port Burgas. The present paper is an extension of the published work on design and implementation of a monitoring system.
The Use of Implementation Science Tools to Design, Implement, and Monitor a Community-Based mHealth Intervention for Child Health in the Amazon

It is essential to analyze the local context and implementation components to effectively deliver evidence-based solutions to public health problems. Tools provided by the field of implementation science can guide practitioners through a comprehensive implementation process, making innovations more adaptable, efficient, and sustainable. It is equally important to report on the design and implementation process so others can analyze, replicate, and improve on the progress made from an intervention. The current study reports on the design and implementation of an mHealth intervention to improve child health in the Amazon of Peru. The study aims to provide insight into how an implementation science tool can be used to improve implementation and reporting of an evidence-based intervention in a global health setting. Methods: Implementation of a community-based mHealth intervention is analyzed and reported through the lens of the Active Implementation Frameworks (AIF). The AIF is used to analyze the design, implementation, adaptation, and monitoring of the intervention. The implementation process is categorized in the four stages of implementation. The results of the analysis and subsequent implementation activities are reported. Results: The exploration stage was used to learn about the local context in the Amazonian communities and identify an evidence-based solution to address poor child health. Several potential solutions were combined to create an innovative mHealth tool. During the installation stage, the stakeholders worked together to improve the intervention and plan for implementation through human-centered design. The providers in the field were trained and data was gathered to monitor implementation. During initial implementation stage, electronic tablets were distributed to community health agents and continuous quality improvement activities allowed for rapid improvements to be implemented. The intervention moved on to full implementation stage as acceptance and fidelity approached 100%. Conclusion: The AIF highlighted several potential barriers to implementation that may have been overlooked without the guidance of a science-based implementation tool. Reporting on the implementation process shows how implementation science tools can be used to foresee and address potential threats to successful implementation. The results of this study provide insight into the components of implementation in Amazonian communities, as well as the process of using implementation science tools in any global health setting.
Forecasting Energy Efficiency and Energy Consumption in Bulgaria by Examining the Energy Intensity Indicator Using Neural Networks

The energy policy of a country is crucial to the prosperity of its economy. There are many factors to consider - dependence on imports, diversification of energy sources, increasing global energy demand, energy efficiency, climate impact, etc. Effective energy planning is based on the estimated energy consumption and the energy efficiency of the economy. The article presents the results of researches conducted for these two indicators, the subject of the study being the energy system of the Republic of Bulgaria. Mathematical models are presented for forecasting the energy intensity of the economy by studying the trend model with time series and through artificial neural networks. A neural network model for predicting the final energy consumption has also been developed, based on data on the gross domestic product and the energy intensity of the economy.
Lateral Plate Polymorphism in Marine and Estuarine Populations of the Threespine Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) along the Coast of Norway

Marine populations of the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) have mostly been described as monomorphic for the complete lateral plate morph, especially in northern waters. An examination of stickleback populations from 27 marine and estuarine sites along the coast of Norway showed that polymorphism is more common than expected; in fact, only 15% of the samples were monomorphic. Populations from estuarine habitats (low salinity) were more polymorphic than populations from marine habitats. A study of morphometric characters shows that the plate morph variation reflects true polymorphism, not just immigration of freshwater sticklebacks or hybridization. Plate number variation within each plate morph was also recorded, but no pattern of variation could be detected, either geographically, or between estuarine and marine habitats.
Discovery of a new strain of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and use of the inbred line approach to optimize its virulence and cold tolerance

Discovery of a new strain of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora and use of the inbred line approach to optimize its virulence and cold tolerance Shahram Sharifi-Far Advisor: University of Guelph, 2016 Rebecca H. Hallett Co-Advisor: David I. Shapiro-Ilan Serial culturing which leads to trait deterioration is a significant concern in the entomopathogenic nematode production industry for both in vivo and in vitro methods. Prior research indicates that generation of homozygous inbred lines can deter trait loss within a nematode population. I hypothesized that the inbred line approach can be combined with discovery (isolation of new genetic material) to create stable nematode strains with superior biocontrol potential. My objective was to test this hypothesis, in relation to developing superior virulence in colder temperatures. A putative cold-tolerant strain of Heterorhabditis bacteriophora was isolated from a local soil sample in southern Ontario. Ten homozygous inbred lines were generated and screened for biocontrol characteristics, including reproductive capacity, storage stability and virulence in a series of different temperatures. Superiority of the inbred lines compared to their wild-type parents, whether sub-cultured or non-cultured, as well as two commercial strains, was observed. Inbred line 415 exhibited very poor virulence, storage stability, reproductive capacity in small-scale and serial culturing trials, whereas inbred line 324 had the best storage stability, high virulence and reproductive capacity among all passages. Hence, this superior line – inbred line 324 – was selected for commercial use. Furthermore, the hypothesis that discovery can be combined with the inbred line approach to develop stable and superior nematodes for biocontrol was
A new similarity measure for low-sampling cellular fingerprint trajectories

The ability of determining and dealing with the trajectories followed by an object in a given (concrete or abstract) space turns out to be quite useful in a variety of contexts. This is the case, in particular, in positioning, where it can be exploited, for instance, for traffic control and user profiling. A key step in trajectory management is the evaluation of trajectory similarity. In many positioning applications, trajectories are built from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) readings; however, in various scenarios, these coordinates are not available. In this paper, we focus on fingerprint positioning systems characterised by a low sampling frequency and a high heterogeneity of the observations. We start with a comprehensive analysis of well-known GNSS-based trajectory similarity measures, and show how some of them can actually be adapted to the fingerprinting setting. Then, we outline a novel approach that exploits multiple information, including both spatial and cellular identifiers with received signal strength. Finally, we make an extensive, experimental comparative evaluation of the various measures (adapted and novel ones) over a real-world fingerprint dataset.
Carbon isotope discrimination measured concurrently with gas exchange to investigate CO2 diffusion in leaves of higher plants

Conventional gas-exchange techniques that measure the stomatal conductance and rate of CO2 assimilation of leaves were combined with measurements of the carbon isotope composition of CO2 in air passing over a leaf. Isotopic discrimination during uptake was determined from the difference in the carbon isotope composition of air entering and leaving the leaf chamber. Isotopic discrimination measured over the short term correlated strongly with that determined from combusted leaf material. Environmental conditions were manipulated to alter the relative influences of stomatal conductance and carboxylation on the discrimination of carbon isotopes by intact leaves. With C3 plants, discrimination increased as the gradient in partial pressure of CO2 across the stomata decreased. For C4 plants there was little change in discrimination despite substantial changes in the diffusion gradient across the sto- mata. These results are consistent with, and provide the first direct experimental support for, theoretical equations describing discrimination during photosynthesis. Despite uncertainties about various processes affecting carbon isotope composition, the resistance to the transfer of CO2 from the intercellular airspaces to the sites of carboxylation in the mesophyll chloroplasts was estimated using this technique. For wheat the estimated resistance was 1.2-2.4 m2 s bar mol -1.
Feluca: A Two-Stage Graph Coloring Algorithm With Color-Centric Paradigm on GPU

There are great challenges in performing graph coloring on GPU in general. First, the long-tail problem exists in the recursion algorithm because the conflict (i.e., different threads assign the adjacent nodes to the same color) becomes more likely to occur as the number of iterations increases. Second, it is hard to parallelize the sequential spread algorithm because the color allocation depends on the adjoining iteration. Third, the atomic operation is widely used on GPU to maintain the color list, which can greatly reduce the efficiency of GPU threads. In this article, we propose a two-stage high-performance graph coloring algorithm, called Feluca, aiming to address the above challenges. Feluca combines the recursion-based method with the sequential spread-based method. In the first stage, Feluca uses a recursive routine to color a majority of vertices in the graph. Then, it switches to the sequential spread method to color the remaining vertices in order to avoid the conflicts of the recursive algorithm. Moreover, the following techniques are proposed to further improve the graph coloring performance. i) A new method is proposed to eliminate the cycles in the graph; ii) a top-down scheme is developed to avoid the atomic operation originally required for color selection; and iii) a novel color-centric coloring paradigm is designed to improve the degree of parallelism for the sequential spread part. All these newly developed techniques, together with further GPU-specific optimizations such as coalesced memory access, comprise an efficient parallel graph coloring solution in Feluca. We have conducted extensive experiments on NVIDIA GPU. The results show that Feluca can achieve 1.19 – 8.39× speedup over the state-of-the-art algorithms.
Simulation of Dynamic Systems by Combined Methods of Prony-Laplace-Pade and Matrix Beams

It is shown that the Prony and matrix beam methods of exponential approximation, which recover the function image basing on a time-solution (an original), and the numerical method of the Laplace-Pade inverse transformation can be considered as a pair of direct and inverse Laplace numerical transformation. The simulation examples of dynamic systems by the combined Prony-Laplace-Pade and matrix beam methods in the time and frequency domains are presented, which are typical for tasks of the circuit theory and radio-electronics. In particular, radio pulse passage with the intra-pulse angular modulation is investigated; the systems with phase and frequency shift keying are studied. The matrix beam method is used to lower the approximation order of circuit functions with a given error value.
Direct and Oxidative DNA Damage in a Group of Painters Exposed to VOCs: Dose – Response Relationship

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are present in several working activities. This work is aimed at comparing oxidative stress and DNA damage biomarkers to specific VOCs in the occupational exposure of painters. Dose-response relationships between biomarkers of oxidative stress and of dose were studied. Unmetabolized VOCs and their urinary metabolites were analyzed. Urinary Methylhyppuric acids (MHIPPs, xylenes metabolite), Phenylglyoxylic and Mandelic acid (PGA, MA ethylbenzene metabolites), S-Benzylmercapturic acid (SBMA, toluene metabolite), and S-Phenylmercapturic acid (SPMA, benzene metabolite) were quantified at the end of work-shift. Oxidative stress was determined by: urinary excretion of 8-oxodGuo, 8-oxoGua and 8-oxoGuo and direct/oxidative DNA damage in blood by Fpg-Comet assay. Multivariate linear regression models were used to assess statistical significance of the association between dose and effect biomarkers. The regressions were studied with and without the effect of hOGG1 and XRCC1 gene polymorphisms. Statistically significant associations were found between MHIPPs and both 8-oxoGuo and oxidative DNA damage effect biomarkers measured with the Comet assay. Oxidative DNA damage results significantly associated with airborne xylenes and toluene, whilst 8-oxodGuo was significantly related to urinary xylenes and toluene. Direct DNA damage was significantly associated to SBMA. XRCC1 wild-type gene polymorphism was significantly associated with lower oxidative and total DNA damage with respect to heterozygous and mutant genotypes. The interpretation of the results requires some caution, as the different VOCs are all simultaneously present in the mixture and correlated among them.
Physiological Responses of an Arctic Crustose Coralline Alga (Leptophytum foecundum) to Variations in Salinity

In the Beaufort Sea, Arctic crustose coralline algae (CCA) persist in an environment of high seasonal variability defined by naturally low pH ocean water and high magnitude freshwater pulses in the spring. The effects of salinity on the CCA Leptophytum foecundum were observed through a series of laboratory and field experiments in Stefansson Sound, Alaska. We found that salinity (treatments of 10, 20, and 30), independent of pH, affected L. foecundum physiology based on measurements of three parameters: photosynthetic yield, pigmentation, and calcium carbonate dissolution. Our experimental results revealed that L. foecundum individuals in the 10-salinity treatment exhibited an obvious stress response while those in the 20- and 30-salinity treatments were not significantly different for three parameters. Reciprocal in situ transplants and recruitment patterns between areas dominated by CCA and areas where CCA were absent illustrated that inshore locations receiving large pulses of freshwater were not suitable for CCA persistence. Ultimately, spatially and temporally varying salinity regimes levels affected distribution of CCA in the nearshore Arctic. These results have implications for epilithic benthic community structure in subtidal areas near freshwater sources and highlight the importance of salinity in CCA physiology.
System-Level EMI of an Artificial Router System With Multiple Radiators: Prediction and Validation

In a multimodule system, an increase in the number of radiating optical modules will increase the electromagnetic emissions. This article investigates the scaled tendency of the emissions in a router system loaded with hundreds of optical modules. An artificial router mimicking the real system was built to investigate this tendency. A patch antenna array mimics the radiation of the optical modules. It can be excited in in-phase and random-phase configurations. The measurement data verifies the theoretical analysis and the prediction from a statistical method without performing hundreds of different experiments on a real router. Assuming that all radiators are radiating at the same frequency and have similar radiation pattern with random phases, the average of the maximal directivity of the system will saturate if the number of radiators (N) is larger than 14. Furthermore, the average of the maximal electric field radiated will increase following a 10 log10 N (dB) tendency.