Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Customizing controller instruction sets for application-specific architectures

Previous work has proposed the "Systems Integrating Modules with Predefined Physical Links" (SIMPPL) architectural framework as one possible method to shorten the design cycle by utilizing a light weight programmable controller (SIMPPL Controller) as the system-level interface. This paper presents a study of how much improvement in area, power, and performance can be achieved through the customization of the SIMPPL Controller's instruction set. Furthermore, we have created a tool to automatically generate the HDL for SIMPPL Controllers with a user specified instruction set. Our study on an FPGA platform has shown that using a customized SIMPPL Controller with a minimal instruction set results in: an area reduction of 42%, a performance increase of 16%, and a power reduction of 10%.
The Second Life of a Sensor Integrating Real-world Experience in Virtual Worlds using Mobile Phones

Virtual world simulators like Second Life represent the latest and most successful frontier of online services for entertainment and business. People have virtual lives in these worlds using personal avatars. Bridging real life and these virtual worlds together is challenging, but enables new application scenarios for these systems. Existing work focuses on the representation of objects inside virtual worlds. We believe that the overall experience will be improved if we can reproduce not only inanimate and passive objects like buildings and beer steins but also the subjects in these virtual environments. In order to have a seamless integration between the physical and virtual worlds, and to maximize the scale of adoption, the system should rely on devices that people already use every day. For this reason, we believe that mobile phones are a natural and ideal conduit. In this paper, we argue that the sensors embedded in commercial mobile phones can be used to infer real-world activities, that in turn can be reproduced in virtual settings. We discuss the challenges related to the implementation of such a system both from algorithmic and systematic points of view. We present the design of a prototype integrating a platform for inferring activities using mobile phones and Second Life. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that sensors used on everyday mobile phones reflecting a person’s activity in the physical world has been expressed in virtual worlds such as Second Life.
To grab the stroma by the horns: From biology to cancer therapy with mesenchymal stem cells

Mesenchymal stem or stromal cells (MSCs) are precursor cells that play important roles in tumorigenesis. MSCs are recruited to tumors from local and distant sources to form part of the tumor microenvironment. MSCs influence tumor progression by interacting with cancer cells, endothelial cells, immune cells, and cancer stem cells, in a context-dependent network. This review aims to synthesize this emerging yet controversial field to identify key questions regarding the mechanisms of MSC mobilization and survival in blood; homing to tumors, metastases, and premetastatic sites; spatiotemporal organization and differentiation; and interaction with immune cells and cancer stem cells. Understanding the fundamental biology underlying mesenchymal stem cell and tumor interactions has the potential to inform our knowledge of cancer initiation and progression as well as lead to novel therapeutics for cancer. Furthermore, knowledge of endogenous mechanisms can be used to “program” exogenous MSCs for targeted chemotherapeutic delivery to tumors and metastases. Emerging studies will provide crucial insight into the mechanisms of tumor interactions with the whole organism including MSCs.
In Vitro Growth of Aragonite Crystal on Nacre Surface

In an effort to investigate the growth mechanism of nacre, a conventional vapor diffusion method for CaCO3 crystal precipitation was applied to in vitro growth of calcium carbonate on freshwater H. cumingii Lea shell. In a 10mM/L CaCl2 solution without any additives, aragonite deposit was obtained on the nacre surface, specifically at the edges of nacreous tablets. At the early stage of the deposition (up to 4 hr), the deposit did not take any specific form. After 12hr of deposition, the deposit exhibited faceted morphology characteristic of crystalline. Further increasing the deposition time resulted in the formation of well-faceted crystals of tower-like shape. Both Raman spectra and X-ray diffraction patterns showed that the deposit consists of aragonite polymorph of calcium carbonate.
Evidence for Obliqueness of Angles as a Cue to Planar Surface Slant Found in Extremely Simple Symmetrical Shapes

The Necker cube is a striking example for perceptual dominance of 3D over 2D. Object symmetry and obliqueness of angles are co-varying cues that may underlie the perceived slant of Necker cubes. To investigate the power of the oblique-angle cue, slants were judged of extremely simple symmetrical shapes. Slant computations based on an assumption of orthogonality were made for two abutting lines as a function of vertex angle and the slant of the screen. Computed slants were compared with slants judged by six subjects under binocular viewing conditions. Judged slant was highly correlated with slant specified by the oblique angles under an assumption of orthogonality. The contributions of screen cues, including binocular disparity, were negligible. The consistency of the judgments across subjects indicates the assumption of orthogonality as one of the principles underlying slant perception. Necker cubes illustrate that the visual system can disengage unambiguous cues in favor of ambiguous object-symmetry and oblique-angle cues, if the latter indicate very different slants. Selective disengagement of cues may be the mechanism that underlies the success of 2D images in ancient, as well as modern civilizations.
Long‐term exogenous application of melatonin delays drought‐induced leaf senescence in apple

To examine the potential roles of melatonin in drought tolerance, we tested the effects of its long‐term exogenous application on ‘Hanfu’ apple (Malus domestica Borkh.). When 100 μm melatonin was added to soils under drought conditions, the resultant oxidative stress was eased and leaf senescence was delayed. This molecule significantly reduced chlorophyll degradation and suppressed the up‐regulation of senescence‐associated gene 12 (SAG12) and pheophorbide a oxygenase (PAO). Such treatment also alleviated the inhibition of photosynthesis brought on by drought stress. We also investigated quenching and the efficiency of Photosystem II (PSII) photochemistry under dark and light conditions and found that melatonin helped to maintain better function of PSII under drought. The addition of melatonin also controlled the burst of hydrogen peroxide, possibly through direct scavenging and by enhancing the activities of antioxidative enzymes and the capacity of the ascorbate–glutathione cycle. Thus, understanding this effect of melatonin on drought tolerance introduces new possibilities to use this compound for agricultural purposes.
Fabrication and properties of stainless steel foams for sandwich panels

Open-celled metallic foams with their specific structural properties are attractive candidates for a wide range of applications in the field of catalyst supports, process, and energy technologies. However, the material is so far not introduced as an engineering material and needs to be characterized for the respective applications. The metallic foams, especially in combination with cover plates, have a high potential for applications as light weight and functional materials. In this article, an industrial manufacturing process is described, which allows to produce a wide range of different qualities of foam with a variety of tailored alloys and pore sizes. The foam material can be stacked and co-sintered with top layers to high-strength sandwich structures. The mechanical properties evaluated in shear and compression tests are promising for couple of aircraft applications.
First experience of the AML‐Berlin‐Frankfurt‐Münster group in pediatric patients with standard‐risk acute promyelocytic leukemia treated with arsenic trioxide and all‐trans retinoid acid

Recently, studies in adults with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) showed high cure rates in low‐risk patients treated with all‐trans retinoid acid (ATRA) and arsenic trioxide (ATO), while toxicities were significantly reduced compared to the standard treatment with ATRA and chemotherapy. Here we report about first experience with 11 pediatric patients with low‐risk APL treated with ATRA and ATO. All patients stayed in molecular remission. All suffered from hyperleukocytosis. Two patients experienced reversible severe side effects. One suffered from osteonecroses at both femurs, seizures, as well as posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, the other patient had an abducens paresis.
Adherence to a Vegetarian Diet and Diabetes Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

We quantitatively assessed the association between a vegetarian diet and diabetes risk using pooled estimates from observational studies. Electronic database searches for articles published from January 1980 to May 2016 were independently performed by two investigators, and 13 articles (14 studies) were identified. The pooled odds ratio (OR) for diabetes in vegetarians vs. non-vegetarians was 0.726 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.608, 0.867). In the subgroup analyses, this inverse association was stronger for the studies conducted in the Western Pacific region (OR 0.514, 95% CI: 0.304, 0.871) and Europe/North America (OR 0.756, 95% CI: 0.589, 0.971) than studies conducted in Southeast Asia (OR 0.888, 95% CI: 0.718, 1.099). No study had a substantial effect on the pooled effect size in the influence analysis, and the Egger’s (p = 0.465) and Begg’s tests (p = 0.584) revealed no publication bias. This meta-analysis indicates that a vegetarian diet is inversely associated with diabetes risk. Our results support the need for further investigations into the effects of the motivations for vegetarianism, the duration of the adherence to a vegetarian diet, and type of vegetarian on diabetes risk.
Efficient primitives and algorithms for many-core architectures

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are a fast evolving architecture. Over the last decade their programmability has been harnessed to solve non-graphics tasks—in many cases at a huge performance advantage to CPUs. Unlike CPUs, GPUs have always been a highly parallel architecture—thousands of lightweight execution contexts are necessary to keep the chip busy. CPUs too have become parallel over the same time period. But having started from the opposite end of the spectrum they expose parallelism of a different nature, where only tens of heavyweight execution contexts are active at any point in time. As parallel architectures become increasingly common, GPUs provide a research vehicle for developing parallel algorithms, programming models, and languages. This dissertation describes a library, CUDA Data Parallel Primitives Library (CUDPP), of building blocks called primitives for efficiently solving a broad range of problems on the GPU. CUDPP has become one of the most used libraries for data-parallel programming on GPUs thus showing the applicability of these building blocks. The most basic of the primitives is scan and its segmented variant, both of which have a rich history in the literature of data-parallel programming. I describe multiple efficient implementations for both variants. Subsequently I look at a class of problems exhibiting nested parallelism that have traditionally proved challenging for many-core processors. For each instance, segmented scan based primitives efficiently solve such problems for the first time on the GPU. In terms of complexity, sort and hash, fundamental algorithms in computer science, prove to be quite challenging to efficiently implement on the GPU. I take a detailed look at both radix sort and a class of comparison sorts. I compare between two different merge strategies that were used on parallel processors in the past and discuss their efficiency on GPUs. I show how sort is used to develop the first efficient algorithm for building spatial hierarchies on the GPU, thus showing how building spatial hierarchies is, in essence, sorting in three dimensions. The penultimate chapter describes the first efficient hash algorithm for GPUs based on cuckoo hashing. I close by looking at two implementations of the set data structure.
Comprehensive Exploration of the Effects of miRNA SNPs on Monocyte Gene Expression

We aimed to assess whether pri-miRNA SNPs (miSNPs) could influence monocyte gene expression, either through marginal association or by interacting with polymorphisms located in 3'UTR regions (3utrSNPs). We then conducted a genome-wide search for marginal miSNPs effects and pairwise miSNPs × 3utrSNPs interactions in a sample of 1,467 individuals for which genome-wide monocyte expression and genotype data were available. Statistical associations that survived multiple testing correction were tested for replication in an independent sample of 758 individuals with both monocyte gene expression and genotype data. In both studies, the hsa-mir-1279 rs1463335 was found to modulate in cis the expression of LYZ and in trans the expression of CNTN6, CTRC, COPZ2, KRT9, LRRFIP1, NOD1, PCDHA6, ST5 and TRAF3IP2 genes, supporting the role of hsa-mir-1279 as a regulator of several genes in monocytes. In addition, we identified two robust miSNPs × 3utrSNPs interactions, one involving HLA-DPB1 rs1042448 and hsa-mir-219-1 rs107822, the second the H1F0 rs1894644 and hsa-mir-659 rs5750504, modulating the expression of the associated genes. As some of the aforementioned genes have previously been reported to reside at disease-associated loci, our findings provide novel arguments supporting the hypothesis that the genetic variability of miRNAs could also contribute to the susceptibility to human diseases.
Weighted median filters with sigma-delta modulation encoding

Digital decimation filters play a fundamental role in oversampled sigma-delta A/D decoders. In this paper, we first show that weighted median (WM) filtering of a demodulated sequence (at the Nyquist rate) can be implemented concurrently in the A/D decoder. Through a simple modification of the binary time-series outputted by the A/D modulator, the sequence obtained after the sigma-delta modulation (SDM) decoder is shown to be equivalent to WM filtering the multilevel sequence at the Nyquist rate. Second, we show that WM filters can be used for SDM decimation filters and that these filters are readily implemented in the SDM binary domain. A very promising characteristic of SDM converters equipped with WM decimating filters is that sharp discontinuities (edges) can be preserved and acquired. Thus, the bandlimited constraint imposed on the input signals can be relaxed making SDM more attractive to A/D conversion of signals containing sharp transitions. The proposed signal processing algorithms, in essence, combine A/D sigma-delta converters and WM filters into a single programmable system.
Is muscle power related to running speed with changes of direction?

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to identify the relationships between leg muscle power and sprinting speed with changes of direction. METHODS EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN the study was designed to describe relationships between physical qualities and a component of sports performance. SETTING testing was conducted in an indoor sports hall and a biomechanics laboratory. PARTICIPANTS 15 male participants were required to be free of injury and have recent experience competing in sports involving sprints with changes of direction. MEASURES subjects were timed in 8 m sprints in a straight line and with various changes of direction. They were also tested for bilateral and unilateral leg extensor muscle concentric power output by an isokinetic squat and reactive strength by a drop jump. RESULTS The correlations between concentric power and straight sprinting speed were non-significant whereas the relationships between reactive strength and straight speed were statistically significant. Correlations between muscle power and speed while changing direction were generally low and non-significant for concentric leg power with some moderate and significant (p<0.05) coefficients found for reactive strength. The participants who turned faster to one side tended to have a reactive strength dominance in the leg responsible for the push-off action. CONCLUSIONS The relationships between leg muscle power and change-of-direction speed were not consistent. Reactive strength as measured by the drop jump appears to have some importance for lateral change-of-direction speed, possibly because of similar push-off actions. It was concluded that reactive strength of the leg extensor muscles has some importance in change-of-direction performance but the other technical and perceptual factors than influence agility performance should also be considered.
Spontaneous crystallization of skyrmions and fractional vortices in fast-rotating and rapidly quenched spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate the spontaneous generation of crystallized topological defects via the combining effects of fast rotation and rapid thermal quench on spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). By solving the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we show that, when the system reaches equilibrium, a hexagonal lattice of skyrmions and a square lattice of half-quantized vortices can be formed in a ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic spinor BEC, respectively, which can be imaged by using the polarization-dependent phase-contrast method.
Preparation and Characterization of Antioxidant Peptides from Fermented Goat Placenta

The goat placenta was fermented by Bacillus subtilis and the optimal fermentation parameters of strongest antioxidant capacity of peptides were obtained using response surface methodology (RSM). The effects of fermentation time, initial pH value and glucose content on the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging capacity of the goat peptides were well fitted to a quadric equation with high determination coefficients. According to the data analysis of design expert, the strongest DPPH radical scavenging capacity value was obtained with the following conditions: content of glucose was 2.23%, initial pH value was 7.00 and fermentation time was 32.15 h. The DPPH radical scavenging capacity commonly referring antioxidant activity showed a concentration dependency and increased with increasing peptide concentration. The effects of temperature and pH were assessed to determine the stability of antioxidant peptides prepared from goat placenta. Antioxidant peptides showed good stabilities when temperature was lower than 70℃. However, the antioxidant peptides lost antioxidant activities rapidly under alkaline and excessive acid condition. Ultrafiltration technique was performed to separate fermentation broth with different Mw (molecular weight). It was found that peptides in the range of < 3 KDa mainly accounted for the antioxidant activities.
Patient–physician mistrust and violence against physicians in Guangdong Province, China: a qualitative study

Objective To better understand the origins, manifestations and current policy responses to patient–physician mistrust in China. Design Qualitative study using in-depth interviews focused on personal experiences of patient–physician mistrust and trust. Setting Guangdong Province, China. Participants One hundred and sixty patients, patient family members, physicians, nurses and hospital administrators at seven hospitals varying in type, geography and stages of achieving goals of health reform. These interviews included purposive selection of individuals who had experienced both trustful and mistrustful patient–physician relationships. Results One of the most prominent forces driving patient–physician mistrust was a patient perception of injustice within the medical sphere, related to profit mongering, knowledge imbalances and physician conflicts of interest. Individual physicians, departments and hospitals were explicitly incentivised to generate revenue without evaluation of caregiving. Physicians did not receive training in negotiating medical disputes or humanistic principles that underpin caregiving. Patient–physician mistrust precipitated medical disputes leading to the following outcomes: non-resolution with patient resentment towards physicians; violent resolution such as physical and verbal attacks against physicians; and non-violent resolution such as hospital-mediated dispute resolution. Policy responses to violence included increased hospital security forces, which inadvertently fuelled mistrust. Instead of encouraging communication that facilitated resolution, medical disputes sometimes ignited a vicious cycle leading to mob violence. However, patient–physician interactions at one hospital that has implemented a primary care model embodying health reform goals showed improved patient–physician trust. Conclusions The blind pursuit of financial profits at a systems level has eroded patient–physician trust in China. Restructuring incentives, reforming medical education and promoting caregiving are pathways towards restoring trust. Assessing and valuing the quality of caregiving is essential for transitioning away from entrenched profit-focused models. Moral, in addition to regulatory and legal, responses are urgently needed to restore trust.
Study on the Feeding Habit of Hepialus pui Larvae

The feeding habit of Hepialus may be involved in the parasitic process of Cordyceps sinensis. To study the feeding habit of Hepialus pui Zhang et al. larva in Tibet Mountain Sejila, the rDNA internal transcribed spacers (ITSs) were cloned and sequenced from 26 species vegetations that distributed in A, B, and C sample area. According to these ITS sequences, the species-specific PCR primers were designed to detect vegetation residues in larval foregut. The results showed that H. pui larva was a polyphagous phytophagous insect mainly feeding on tender roots of almost all alpine shrub plants distributed in 15 families and 23 genera. The larva's favourite foods are the roots of Ranunculus brotherusii, Cyananthus macrocalyx, Juncus leucanthus and Veronica ciliate.
Bandwidth-Greedy Hashing for Massive-Scale Concurrent Flows

The explosion of network bandwidth poses greatchallenges to data-plane flow processing. Due to the variable andpoor worst-case performance, naive hash table is incapable ofwire-speed processing. State-of-the-art schemes rely on multiplehash functions for enhanced load balancing to improve the worst-case performance. These schemes exploit the memory hierarchyand allocate compact on-chip data structures as the off-chiphash table summaries. However, when the flow number inflates, they fail to scale the on-chip memory consumption gracefully. This work is inspired by modern DRAM's burst-transfer feature. Specifically, we propose bandwidth-greedy hashing which resolveshash collisions with just one DRAM burst. Besides, load balancingefforts are made in an "on-demand" fashion. This radicaldesign surmounts the major obstacle of mapping multiple choicehashing schemes to real-world hierarchical memory systems formassive-scale items. Essentially, this solution follows a designpattern of on-demand load balancing and can be regarded asa generalization of closed hashing. To establish its theoreticalbase, we analyze it via Poisson distribution approximation. Theevaluation on DRAMSim2 reports that our scheme requires onlyone DRAM burst access (in 99.999% cases) and minuscule on-chip memory (less than 16MB, or 1% of the previous) to supportlookups for 100M flows at a throughput of 122.82Mpps.