Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A derivative PWM control method with constant switching frequency

A derivative PWM control method with constant switching frequency strong against incoming switching noise is proposed. The triangular voltage obtained from a simple RC network as a comparator input is employed to determine the duty ratio and an external clock signal is used to fix the switching frequency. Applying the proposed method to the buck converter, excellent dynamic performances and stable switching action are realized.
A risk assessment scale for the prediction of pressure sore development: reliability and validity.

BACKGROUND The ability to assess the risk of a patient developing pressure sores is a major issue in pressure sore prevention. Risk assessment scales should be valid, reliable and easy to use in clinical practice. AIM To develop further a risk assessment scale, for predicting pressure sore development and, in addition, to present the validity and reliability of this scale. METHODS The risk assessment pressure sore (RAPS) scale, includes 12 variables, five from the re-modified Norton scale, three from the Braden scale and three from other research results. Five hundred and thirty patients without pressure sores on admission were included in the study and assessed over a maximum period of 12 weeks. Internal consistency was examined by item analysis and equivalence by interrater reliability. To estimate equivalence, 10 pairs of nurses assessed a total of 116 patients. The underlying dimensions of the scale were examined by factor analysis. The predictive validity was examined by determination of sensitivity, specificity and predictive value. RESULTS Two variables were excluded as a result of low item-item and item-total correlations. The average percentage of agreement and the intraclass correlation between raters were 70% and 0.83, respectively. The factor analysis gave three factors, with a total variance explained of 65.1%. Sensitivity, specificity and predictive value were high among patients at medical and infection wards. CONCLUSION The RAPS scale is a reliable scale for predicting pressure sore development. The validity is especially good for patients undergoing treatment in medical wards and wards for infectious diseases. This indicates that the RAPS scale may be useful in clinical practice for these groups of patients. For patients undergoing surgical treatment, further analysis will be performed.
Effect of Deep Pentobarbital Anesthesia on Neurotransmitter Metabolism in Vivo: On the Correlation of Total Glucose Consumption with Glutamatergic Action

The effect of deep barbiturate anesthesia on brain glucose transport, TCA cycle flux, and aspartate, glutamate, and glutamine metabolism was assessed in the rat brain in vivo using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy at 9.4 T in conjunction with [1-13C] glucose infusions. Brain glucose concentrations were elevated, consistent with a twofold reduced cerebral metabolic rate for glucose (CMRglc) compared with light α-chloralose anesthesia. Using a mathematical model of neurotransmitter metabolism, several metabolic reaction rates were extracted from the rate of label incorporation. Total oxidative glucose metabolism, CMRglc(ox), was 0.33 ± 0.03 μmol·g−1 · min−1. The neuronal TCA cycle rate was similar to that in the glia, 0.35 ± 0.03 μmol · g−1 · min−1 and 0.26 ± 0.06 μmol · g−1 · min−1, respectively, suggesting that neuronal energy metabolism was mainly affected. The rate of pyruvate carboxylation was 0.03 ± 0.01 μmol·g−1 · min−1. The exchange rate between cytosolic glutamate and mitochondrial 2-oxoglutarate, Vx, was equal to the rate of neuronal pyruvate dehydrogenase flux. This indicates that Vx is coupled to CMRglc(ox), implying that the malate-aspartate shuttle is the major mechanism that facilitates label exchange across the inner mitochondrial membrane. The apparent rate of glutamatergic neurotransmission, VNT, was 0.04 ± 0.01 μmol·g−1 · min−1, consistent with strong reductions in electrical activity. However, the rates of cerebral oxidative glucose metabolism and glutamatergic neurotransmission, CMRglc(ox)/VNT, did not correlate with a 1:1 stoichiometry.
Design of LDPC code strategy for orthogonal modulation

M-ary bi-orthogonal keying (MBOK) is a kind of orthogonal modulation that uses the spectrum efficiency to obtain a power gain in the power limited system. In this paper, coding strategy combined with MBOK is investigated to get an optimal combination performance. Specifically, advantages of orthogonal modulation is analyzed and compared with spread spectrum method. Then the error pattern of MBOK modulated signals through AWGN channel is studied to illustrate problems of the combination of LDPC and MBOK. Meanwhile, we investigate the matched combination strategy when modulated by MBOK. And BICM is employed to preserve the soft iterative decoding information when unmatched. At last, we test the performances of these three combination strategies in AWGN channel. According to simulation results, matched GF(q) LDPC strategy for MBOK modulation has at least 0.5db advantage over the unmatched combination when the BER is 1E-5. The gap to Shannon limit could be less than 0.5db. We also discover the unmatched combination could be improved by using BICM, but the performance is still a little worse than the matched combination.
Scaling and crossover in the large-N model for growth kinetics.

The dependence of the scaling properties of the structure factor on space dimensionality, range of interaction, initial and final conditions, presence or absence of a conservation law is analysed in the framework of the large-N model for growth kinetics. The variety of asymptotic behaviours is quite rich, including standard scaling, multiscaling and a mixture of the two. The different scaling properties obtained as the parameters are varied are controlled by a structure of fixed points with their domains of attraction. Crossovers arising from the competition between distinct fixed points are explicitely obtained. Temperature fluctuations below the critical temperature are not found to be irrelevant when the order parameter is conserved. The model is solved by integration of the equation of motion for the structure factor and by a renormalization group approach.
Design and improving the transition-band characteristic of a stepped impedance low pass filter for communication systems

High-speed mixed integrated circuits are playing a major role in wireless and mobile communication devices today. The increasing clock rates, higher packaging densities, compact geometries and the overall complexity have been some of the major concerns for the RF, microwave design engineer. The passive component, low pass filters are used for various wireless applications. In certain, low pass filters with high stop band attenuation and low insertion loss are used to suppress spurious signals & harmonics. These filters found frequent applications in mixers, equalizers, oscillators and other wireless communication systems. To design the proposed filter, a 8th order lowpass filter prototype was simulated results are compared with the proposed data. In order to achieve this purpose we have designed and simulated C-band microstrip line low-pass filter (using microstrip lines) in ADS software. We have chosen the bandwidth of 4.5 GHz has been implemented with FR4 substrate and the relative permittivity 4.4 with thickness 62 mil. I have achieved the -3.003 dB at 4.5 GHz which is cut off frequency from the simulation result. The return loss is greater than -52 dB.
Low-complexity pilot-aided channel estimation for OFDM systems over doubly-selective channels

In this paper, we investigate channel estimation (CE) and data detection for OFDM systems over doubly-selective channels. We derive an oversampling basis expansion model (BEM) for doubly-selective channels and its statistical properties. The time diversity in the Doppler-induced inter-carrier-interference (ICI) and its relationship to the carrier frequency offset (CFO) induced ICI are illustrated using the BEM. We derive two low complexity linear minimum mean-square-error (LMMSE) channel estimators using the BEM. The sphere decoder (SD) is modified to equalize the ICI channel. A low-complexity iterative equalizer without matrix inversion is also proposed. Our proposed channel estimators have low complexity and achieve good performance. Furthermore, the low-complexity iterative equalizer performs close to SD.
A Language for Nested Data Parallel Design-space Exploration on GPUs

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) o er potential for very high performance; they are also rapidly evolving. Obsidian is an embedded language (in Haskell) for implementing high performance kernels to be run on GPUs. We would like to have our cake and eat it too; we want to raise the level of abstraction beyond CUDA code and still give the programmer control over the details relevant kernel performance. To that end Obsidian includes guaranteed elimination of intermediate arrays and predictable space/time costs, while also providing array functions that are polymorphic across di erent levels of the GPUs' hierarchical structure, providing a limited form of nested data parallelism. We walk through case-studies that demonstrate how to use Obsidian for rapid design exploration or auto-tuning, resulting in better performance than hand-tuned kernels in an existing GPU language.
Effects of Wind Turbines on Property Values in Rhode Island

Executive Summary This study assesses of the effect that onshore wind turbines have on nearby property values in Rhode Island. The state of Rhode Island established the RIWINDS program in 2006 to promote the development of wind energy in the state, with the goal of meeting 15% of the state's electrical consumption with wind energy. Yet progress towards that goal has been slow. Wind energy proposals commonly meet with strong opposition despite widespread public support for wind energy in the abstract, and a major source of opposition that is commonly articulated is a concern that wind turbines may adversely affect property values. As a consequence, it is important to assess the extent to which wind turbines affect transaction prices of nearby properties. Methodology The study estimates the effect of wind towers on property prices using the Hedonic Price technique. The Hedonic method is a statistical approach that uses extensive data on property transactions to identify the extent to which transaction prices are affected by various characteristics of the properties and their surroundings. Characteristics of the property include such factors as the size of the house, size of the lot, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, among other characteristics of the property. Neighborhood characteristics might include factors such as ocean views, crime rates, nearby industrial developments, among others. The key factor for purposes of this study is the effect, if any, that nearby wind turbines have on property prices. This study uses data from 48,554 single-family, owner-occupied housing transactions within five miles of turbine sites in Rhode Island over the time Of these transactions, 3,254 are for properties that are within one mile of the wind turbine, and it is these observations that are critical for estimating the impacts. If wind turbines have an adverse impact on property transaction prices, then we should find that transactions for properties that are located closer to the wind turbine (e.g., within ½ mile) should sell for systematically lower prices than those located further from the wind turbine (e.g., 3 to 5 miles), after controlling for other characteristics of the various properties and their surroundings. 3 In addition to distance to the wind tower, we also consider other factors related to the wind turbine that could influence effects on property values. First, one might expect a larger wind turbine to have a greater effect on values of nearby properties than would a smaller wind tower, …
Bouwen op een gemeenschappelijk verleden aan een succesvolle toekomst : een onderzoek naar samenwerkingsproblemen in interorganisationele relaties vanuit bouwnijverheid

With the division of labour, a specialised economic system has developed in which hardly any people are economically self-reliant in the sense that they produce all the goods and services they wish to consume. As a consequence, within today’s specialised economic system innumerable purchasing transactions have to occur. Since, on the one hand, we are all specialised and, on the other hand, we need the specialised goods and services of others, a vast network of exchange is necessary to allocate the available goods and services. In this context, companies are continuously focusing on their core capabilities, which inseparably asks for new forms of co-operation beyond the boundaries of an organisation: cooperative interorganisational relations. Since the mid-eighties we can also observe a rapidly growing body of literature on interorganisational co-operation.
A novel sub-20 nm depletion-mode double-gate (DMDG) FET

We present a novel Depletion-Mode Double-Gate (DMDG) FET. As opposed to the conventional, un-doped body, double-gate MOSFETs, the DMDG device confines the carriers to the center of the device for all applied gate voltages. The device exhibits high mobility due to the carrier confinement in the very low E-field region in the center of the device. Simulations show very high I/sub on//I/sub off/ ratios (NMOS=2.07 mA/25 nA, PMOS=1.02 mA/0.98 nA), excellent sub-threshold slopes and Fan-Out-Four (FO4) delays under 5.5 ps for 15 nm gate lengths.
The Economics of Group Practice

This article presents a theoretical and empirical discussion of how costs of outpatient medical practice vary with the size of the group providing services. It focuses upon the incentives of the individual physican to keep the costs of the practice down and his work effort high. Since cost and revenue-sharing schemes tend to dilute this incentive, we would expect that costs would be greater and hours of work less where they are present. The evidence presented in the article tends to support these propositions.
Executive Decree Authority: Absence of Conflict Over Decree

1. Calling out the tanks or filling out the forms? John M. Carey and Matthew Soberg Shugart 2. When the president governs alone: the decretazo in Argentina 1989-93 Delia Ferreira Rubio and Matteo Goretti 3. Presidential decree authority in Russia, 1991-5 Scott Parrish 4. Presidential usurpation or congressional preference? : the evolution of executive decree authority in Peru Gregory Schmidt 5. Presidential decree authority in Venezuela Brian F. Crisp 6. Dancing without a lead: legislative decrees in Italy Vincent Della Sala and Amie Kreppel 7. The pen is mightier than the congress: Presidential decree power in Brazil Timothy J. Power 8. Executive decree authority in France John D. Huber 9. In search of the administrative President: Presidential 'decree' powers and policy implementation in the United States Brian R. Sala 10. Institutional design and executive decree John M. Carey and Matthew Soberg Shugart Appendix References.
Extracting (Easily) Checkable Proofs from a Satisfiability Solver that Employs both Preorder and Postorder Resolution

In many applications the desired outcome of satisfiability checking is that the formula is unsatisfiable: A satisfying assignment essentially exhibits a bug and unsatisfiability implies a lack of bugs, at least for the property being verified. Current high-performance satisfiability checkers are unable to provide proof of unsatisfiability. Since bugs have been discovered in many solvers long after being put into service, an uncheckable decision poses a significant problem if important economic or safety decisions are to be based upon it. Current tableau-based systems that are able to produce proofs are unable to process propositional formulas of practical size. This paper describes modifications of the classical backtracking-search satisfiability algorithm of Davis, Putnam, Loveland and Logemann (DPLL) that are designed to extract checkable proofs of practical length when the formula is believed to be unsatisfiable. It is known that the purely postorder resolution proofs extractable from standard DPLL (called “tree resolution” proofs) are exponentially longer than nontree proofs in the worst case. Experience also shows them to be of impractical length. This paper describes an efficient method to integrate postorder resolution with preorder reasoning methods, including binary-clause reasoning, equivalent-literal identification, and variableelimination resolution, to produce nontree proofs. Preliminary experiments show that the resulting proofs are much shorter, but that memory has to be managed extremely carefully and the time is usually longer compared to the best “complete” programs that do not produce proofs.
InSAR detects possible thaw settlement in the Alaskan Arctic Coastal Plain

Satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) has proven to be an effective tool for monitoring surface deformation from volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and groundwater withdrawal. This paper seeks to expand the list of applications of InSAR data to include monitoring subsidence possibly associated with thaw settlement over the Alaskan Arctic Coastal Plain. To test our hypothesis that InSAR data are sufficiently sensitive to detect subsidence associated with thaw settlement, we acquired all Japanese Earth Resources Satellite-1 (JERS-1) L-band data available for the summers of 1996, 1997, and 1998 over two sites on the Alaska North Slope. The least amount of subsidence for both study sites was detected in the interferograms covering the summer of 1996 (2–3 cm), interferograms from 1997 and 1998 revealed that about 3 cm of subsidence occurred at the northern Cache One Lake site, and about 5 cm of subsidence was detected at the southern Kaparuk River site. These preliminary results illustrate the capacity of the L-band (24 cm) wavelength JERS-1 radar data to penetrate the short Arctic vegetation to monitor subsidence possibly associated with thaw settlement of the active layer and (or) other hydrologic changes over relatively large areas.
Overdistention operation of cascaded multilevel inverters

In the past decade, the multilevel power converter has transitioned from an experimental concept to a standard product of many medium-voltage drive manufacturers. By utilizing small voltage steps, the multilevel topology offers higher power quality, higher voltage capability, lower switching losses, and improved electromagnetic compatibility over standard topologies. Recently, several researchers have focused on the cascaded multilevel inverter whereby two multilevel inverters are series connected to a motor load by splitting the neutral connection. The resulting performance is exceptional in terms of power quality since the overall number of voltage levels is effectively the product of the two cascaded inverters. This paper demonstrates that it is possible to extend this performance to an even higher number of voltage levels referred to as overdistended operation. This further improves the power quality that is significant in applications that have stringent total harmonic distorsion requirements, such as naval ship propulsion. A new control is introduced for overdistention operation and is validated with computer simulation and laboratory measurements.
Low Birth Weight due to Intrauterine Growth Restriction and/or Preterm Birth: Effects on Nephron Number and Long-Term Renal Health

Epidemiological studies have clearly demonstrated a strong association between low birth weight and long-term renal disease. A potential mediator of this long-term risk is a reduction in nephron endowment in the low birth weight infant at the beginning of life. Importantly, nephrons are only formed early in life; during normal gestation, nephrogenesis is complete by about 32–36 weeks, with no new nephrons formed after this time during the lifetime of the individual. Hence, given that a loss of a critical number of nephrons is the hallmark of renal disease, an increased severity and acceleration of renal disease is likely when the number of nephrons is already reduced prior to disease onset. Low birth weight can result from intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) or preterm birth; a high proportion of babies born prematurely also exhibit IUGR. In this paper, we describe how IUGR and preterm birth adversely impact on nephrogenesis and how a subsequent reduced nephron endowment at the beginning of life may lead to long-term risk of renal disease, but not necessarily hypertension.
The association between water kilomasers and compact radio sources in the starburst galaxy NGC 2146

We report the detection of 22 GHz water vapor emission toward the starburst galaxy NGC 2146, made using the Eelsberg 100-m telescope. Interferometric observations with the Very Large Array (VLA) show that a part of the emission originates from two prominent sites of star formation that are associated with compact radio continuum sources, likely ultra-compact HII regions. It is concluded that the emission arises from the most luminous and distant H2O \kilomasers" detected so far. Our data increase the number of water maser detections in northern galaxies (Dec > 30) with IRAS point source fluxes S100m > 50 Jy to 18%.
Bionic Inspirations of Fish-like Robots from Rhinecanthus Aculeatus

Due to oceanic exploitation necessities, such as benthonic archaeology, exploration to benthonic mineral resources and salvaging of sunken ships, a novel kind of fish-like robot has become one of the hot topics in the field of underwater vehicles. For such aquatic robots, high maneuverability and great stability are more important than high speed or remarkable accelerating performance. This paper extracts some interesting and helpful inspirations from Rhinecanthus aculeatus, which belongs to MPF (median and/or paired fin) propulsion fish and impresses researchers with agility by cooperative undulations of the dorsal-and-anal fins. To begin with, a selected specimen of R. aculeatus was filmed in a large aquarium (150 cm times 50 cm times 60 cm) in which artificial seawater was maintained at 26 degC or so, for observations and measurements. Then, several characteristics in morphology and locomotion were respectively analyzed with image processing and other approaches based on the filmed swimming sequences. Finally, we sum up some bionic inspirations of R. aculeatus for a novel robfish which is distinct with an undulatory multi-fin biopropulsor, and this conceptual aquatic vehicle has been expected to exhibit better maneuverability, greater stability, and higher efficiency
An ear decomposition approach to approximating the smallest 3-edge connected spanning subgraph of a multigraph

This paper gives a 3/2 approximation algorithm for the smallest 3-edge connected spanning subgraph of an undirected multigraph. The previous best algorithm of Khuller and Raghavachari [8] has approximation ratio 5/3. The algorithm of Cheriyan and Thurimella [3] achieves ratio 3/2 for simple graphs. Our approach is based on the relationship between an ear decomposition of a 2-edge connected graph and 3-edge connected components, enabling us to achieve running time O(mα(m,n)).
House Prices and Spatial Dependence: Towards an Integrated Procedure to Model Neighborhood Dynamics

This paper deals with applying GIS and spatial statistics to hedonic modeling. More precisely, it looks at spatial autocorrelation and trend surface analysis (TSA) as devices that can be used to improve model performances. Empirical analysis is performed on the Charlesbourg 1986-87 bungalow (one-story, single-family detached unit) residential market segment. Charlesbourg is the third largest municipality in the Quebec Urban Community (QUC), with some 71 000 in population by 1991.