Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Data retention of silicon nanocrystal storage nodes programmed with short voltage pulses

In this paper, data retention of nonvolatile memories with silicon nanocrystal discrete storage nodes is theoretically and experimentally investigated. Samples under test were memory arrays of 256/spl times/10/sup 3/ cells with 4-nm-thick tunnel oxide. Charge loss of cycled arrays was monitored using the gate-stress (GS) technique. A first set of samples was cycled by applying the conventional program and erase pulses on a millisecond timescale. Experiments showed different features as a function of the GS time, namely: 1) a fast discharge at short times and 2) a much slower leakage mechanism at long times. Leakage was analytically modeled by taking into account trap-assisted tunnel and direct tunnel at short and long times, respectively. Afterward, starting from the dynamics ruling the mechanism of creation of a new trap, another set of samples was cycled with pulsed voltage waveforms of suitable duty cycle and pulses on a microsecond timescale. In this case, the fast discharge was inhibited, and data retention consistently improved. The latter behavior was modeled in terms of a much lower trap density compared to that in the conventional cycling. The advantages of pulsed tunnel programming technique over the standard one in terms of data retention are definitely assessed.
A Dynamic and Self-Adaptive Network Selection Method for Multimode Communications in Heterogeneous Vehicular Telematics

With the increasing demands for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications in intelligent transportation systems, new generation of vehicular telematics inevitably depends on the cooperation of heterogeneous wireless networks. In heterogeneous vehicular telematics, the network selection is an important step to the realization of multimode communications that use multiple access technologies and multiple radios in a collaborative manner. This paper presents an innovative network selection solution for the fundamental technological requirement of multimode communications in heterogeneous vehicular telematics. To guarantee the QoS satisfaction of multiple mobile users and the efficient utilization and fair allocation of heterogeneous network resources in a global sense, a dynamic and self-adaptive method for network selection is proposed. It is biologically inspired by the cellular gene network, which enables terminals to dynamically select an appropriate access network according to the variety of QoS requirements and to the dynamic conditions of various available networks. The experimental results prove the effectiveness of the bioinspired scheme and confirm that the proposed network selection method provides better global performance when compared with the utility function method with greedy optimization.
The Psychological Impact of Hemodialysis on Patients with Chronic Renal Failure

Renal disease is common throughout the world. In the United States alone, almost 100,000 people began renal replacement therapy (RRT) for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) in 2001(Kimmel & Peterson, 2005); by 2008, this number had increased to 485,000 patients (Collins et al., 2009). More than 90% of these patients were started on hemodialysis (HD), while only 8.5% began RRT with peritoneal dialysis (PD)(Kimmel & Peterson, 2005). In Korea, the number of dialysis centers and machines has continuously increased, and 62.1% of patients receiving RRT were being treated with HD (Son et al., 2009). An international comparison showed that Taiwan has the greatest incidence and second-greatest prevalence of ESRD (Kuo et al., 2007). Furthermore, renal disease is one of the top 10 causes of death in Taiwan, and roughly 95% of ESRD patients are on HD (Hsieh et al., 2007).
An accurate design to calculate and measure the capacitance of CMUT for pressure sensors

Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducer (CMUT) is a type of micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) device which has the advantages such as ease of integration with front-end electronics and fabrication of uniform device arrays. The structure and fundamental working principle of a CMUT are similar to that of a parallel plate capacitor. When working in conventional mode, the deflection profiles can be described by analytical expressions and the capacitance can be calculated thereafter. A design was proposed to calculate the deflection profiles of the CMUT membrane accurately and eliminate the parasitic capacitance of the CMUT device. By appropriately selecting the dimensions of the device, the CMUT can be used as a pressure sensor.
Time, Language and Action - A Unified Long-Term Memory Model for Sensory-Motor Chains and Word Schemata

Recent advances in cognitive psychology and neuroscience emphasize that action and language are not organized as insulated brain subsystems. Rather, language processing elicits perceptual and motor processes/responses that are tightly coupled with the referents of what is heard or read. Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998) proposed that linguistic abilities developed phylogenetically on top of action control abilities, on the basis of a common brain substrate where the mirror neuron system plays a key role. Accordingly, area F5 of the monkey brain (where mirror neurons are located) is a precursor of human Broca's area (devoted to language processing), and language could have inherited the “grammatical” and combinatorial structure of actions. An Italian CNR project is currently exploring the related hypothesis that the ability to form chains of goal-directed actions (ie, action sequences leading to a distal result) and chains of linguistic units (eg, sequences of phonemes, morphemes or words forming a sentence) may rely on the same neural architecture obeying a common pool of organizing principles.
Content Adaptive Lagrange Multiplier Selection for Rate-Distortion Optimization in 3-D Wavelet-Based Scalable Video Coding

Rate-distortion optimization (RDO) plays an essential role in substantially enhancing the coding efficiency. Currently, rate-distortion optimized mode decision is widely used in scalable video coding (SVC). Among all the possible coding modes, it aims to select the one which has the best trade-off between bitrate and compression distortion. Specifically, this tradeoff is tuned through the choice of the Lagrange multiplier. Despite the prevalence of conventional method for Lagrange multiplier selection in hybrid video coding, the underlying formulation is not applicable to 3-D wavelet-based SVC where the explicit values of the quantization step are not available, with on consideration of the content features of input signal. In this paper, an efficient content adaptive Lagrange multiplier selection algorithm is proposed in the context of RDO for 3-D wavelet-based SVC targeting quality scalability. Our contributions are two-fold. First, we introduce a novel weighting method, which takes account of the mutual information, gradient per pixel, and texture homogeneity to measure the temporal subband characteristics after applying the motion-compensated temporal filtering (MCTF) technique. Second, based on the proposed subband weighting factor model, we derive the optimal Lagrange multiplier. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm enables more satisfactory video quality with negligible additional computational complexity.
Natural-dye-sensitised solar cells based on TiO2 nanotube arrays

Abstract Dye-sensitised solar cells (DSSCs) were fabricated using TiO2 nanotube array photoelectrodes with natural-dye sensitizers composed of extracts of mango, pumpkin and banana. Conversion of visible light into electricity was accomplished, with a performance comparable to any that has been reported for DSSCs based on TiO2 nanoparticles. The power conversion efficiencies of cells sensitised with dyes based on mango, pumpkin and banana extracts reached 0·15%, 0·06% and 0·21%, respectively, with short-circuit current densities of 0·44, 0·13 and 0·78 mA cm−2, respectively.
Cervical Cancer Screening in Ethnocultural Groups: Case Studies in Women-Centered Care

ABSTRACT Introduction. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe critical elements of women-centered care within the context of providing cervical screening to three ethnocultural groups in Canada: Asian, South Asian and First Nations. Methods. Data for this collective case study included open-ended interviews with purposive samples of women and key informants from each target group. Following thematic analysis, cross-case analysis was completed by comparing and contrasting issues and contextual factors influencing women's and providers' experiences. Results. Cervical screening services for each group were shaped by attention to ethnocultural values, women's desire for thorough explanations, and the importance of a comfortable setting. While participation rates varied across clinics, women were positive about their experiences in obtaining cervical screening. Some women's expectations that they could address a range of health concerns with female health providers at the clinics were stymied by structural barriers that prevented staff from addressing issues beyond those directly related to cervical screening. Cross-case analysis revealed three key elements of women-centered care: respectful and culturally appropriate interactions between women and health providers, the importance of providing acceptable alternatives for women, and the need for comprehensive health services. Conclusion. While the establishment of Pap test clinics for ethnocultural groups has the potential to enhance participation in cervical screening, changes in health policy and the structure of health ser vices are required for existing programs to fully implement the elements of women-centered health care identified in this study. Other models of providing health care to women in ethnocultural groups, including the use of clinics staffed by nurse practitioners, should be evaluated.
Improving Piecewise Linear Registration of High-Resolution Satellite Images Through Mesh Optimization

Piecewise linear transformation is a powerful technique for coping with the registration of images affected by local geometric distortions, as it is usually the case of high-resolution satellite images. A key point when applying this technique is to divide the images to register according to a suitable common triangular mesh. This comprises two different aspects: where to place the mesh vertices (i.e., the mesh geometrical realization) and to set an appropriate topology upon these vertices (i.e., the mesh topological realization). This paper focuses on the latter and presents a novel method that improves the registration of two images by an iterative optimization process that modifies the mesh connectivity by swapping edges. For detecting if an edge needs to be swapped or not, we evaluate the registration improvement of that action on the two triangles connected by the edge. Another contribution of our proposal is the use of the mutual information for measuring the registration consistency within the optimization process, which provides more robustness to image changes than other well-known metrics such as normalized cross-correlation or sum of square differences. The proposed method has been successfully tested with different pairs of panchromatic QuickBird images (0.6 m/pixel of spatial resolution) of a variety of land covers (urban, residential, and rural) acquired under different lighting conditions and viewpoints.
Dementia risk factors for Australian baby boomers

Baby boomers are individuals born in the years 1946 to 1965. The objective of this paper was to define the risk factors for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and their relevance to Australian baby boomers, with the aim of providing evidence-based guidelines for dementia prevention. A series of PubMed searches (1994–2010) were conducted with relevant key words. Data was included from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in relation to baby boomers in Australia. Article titles and abstracts were assessed by two reviewers for inclusion. Searches through ABS revealed no specific study on baby boomers at a national level; information was only available for Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. A number of genetic and non-genetic risk factors for dementia were identified most of which remain controversial and require further study. We did not identify significant differences in the prevalence and incidence of dementia in those under 65 years in Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. There were no correlations of risk factors and dementia between the Australian states. Modification of risk factors has not been proven to reduce the incidence and prevalence of dementia and AD in baby boomers. Nevertheless, on available evidence, we recommend: i) active management of cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension; ii) the encouragement of a healthy lifestyle (eg, weight reduction, exercise) as offering the best pathways to reduce the emerging dementia risk for baby boomers. The implications are that activities promoting a healthy heart might lead to a healthy brain and help to prevent dementia.
Caloric restriction minimizes aging effects on the femoral medial condyle

Abstract This study aimed to analyze the effects of caloric restriction on aged femoral articular cartilage of Wistar rats. Three groups of eight animals each were considered: young (YC) and old (OC) control groups fed with a normal diet and old caloric restriction group (OCR) composed of 18-month-old animals fed with a 31% less caloric diet from 6-months of age. Articular cartilage was studied through morphometry and immunohistochemistry. Body mass was 12% less in the OCR group than in the OC group. The articular cartilage from OC rats show thinner medial condyles, fewer chondrocytes, smaller chondrocytes nuclear volume and, in both condyles, a predominance of collagen type II and less collagen density compared to both YC and OCR groups (p < .001). In contrast, OCR articular cartilage show thicker medial condyles, larger chondrocytes nuclear volume and increased collagen density compared to OC group (p < 0.001). We concluded that caloric restriction minimizes the effects of aging on medial condyles of the femoral articular cartilage.
Mechanical and thermal properties of poly(butylene succinate)/plant fiber biodegradable composite

Biodegradable polymeric composites were fabricated from poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) and kenaf fiber (KF) by melt mixing technique. The mechanical and dynamic mechanical properties, morphology and crystallization behavior were investigated for PBS/KF composites with different KF contents (0, 10, 20, and 30 wt %). The tensile modulus, storage modulus and the crystallization rate of PBS in the composites were all efficiently enhanced. With the incorporation of 30% KF, the tensile modulus and storage modulus (at 40°C) of the PBS/KF composite were increased by 53 and 154%, respectively, the crystallization temperature in cooling process at 10°C/min from the melt was increased from 76.3 to 87.7°C, and the half-time of PBS/KF composite in isothermal crystallization at 96 and 100°C were reduced to 10.8% and 14.3% of that of the neat PBS, respectively. SEM analysis indicates that the adhesion between PBS and KF needs further improvement. These results signify that KF is efficient in improving the tensile modulus, storage modulus and the crystallization rate of PBS. Hence, this study provides a good option for preparing economical biodegradable composite. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2010
Efficient object tracking using K means and Radial Basis Function

In the present article, an efficient method for object tracking is proposed using Radial Basis Function Neural Networks and K-means. This proposed method starts with K-means algorithm to do the segmentation of the object and background in the frame. The Pixel-based color features are used for identifying and tracking the object. The remaining background is also considered. These classified features of object and extended background are used to train the Radial Basis Function Neural Network. The trained network will track the object in next subsequent frames. This method is tested for the video sequences and is suitable for real-time tracking due to its low complexity. The objective of this experiment is to minimize the computational cost of the tracking method with required accuracy.
Identifying Overlying Group of People through Clustering

Folksonomies like Delicious and LastFm are modeled as multilateral user-resource-tag hypergraphs for studying their network properties. Detecting communities of similar nodes from such networks is a challenging problem. Most existing algorithms for community detection in folksonomies assign unique communities to nodes, whereas in reality, users have multiple relevant interests and same resource is often tagged with semantically different tags. Few attempts to perceive overlapping communities work on forecasts of hypergraph, which results in momentous loss of information contained in original tripartite structure. Propose first algorithm to detect overlapping communities in folksonomies using complete hypergraph structure. The authors' algorithm converts a hypergraph into its parallel line graph, using measures of hyperedge similarity, whereby any community detection algorithm on unipartite graphs can be used to produce intersecting communities in folksonomy. Through extensive experiments on synthetic as well as real folksonomy data, demonstrate that proposed algorithm can detect better community structures as compared to existing state-of-the-art algorithms for folksonomies.
Pioglitazone prevents alcohol-induced fatty liver in rats through up-regulation of c-Met.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Treatment of steatosis is important in preventing development of fibrosis in alcoholic liver diseases. This study aimed to examine if pioglitazone, an antidiabetic reagent serving as a ligand of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPAR gamma), could prevent alcoholic fatty liver. METHODS Rats fed with an ethanol-containing liquid diet were given the reagent at 10 mg/kg per day intragastrically for 6 weeks. Hepatic genes involved in actions of the reagent were mined by transcriptome analyses, and their changes were confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting analyses. The direct effects of pioglitazone on primary-cultured hepatocytes were also assessed in vitro. RESULTS Pioglitazone significantly attenuated steatosis and lipid peroxidation elicited by chronic ethanol exposure without altering insulin resistance. Mechanisms for improving effects of the reagent appeared to involve restoration of the ethanol-induced down-regulation of c-Met and up-regulation of stearoyl-CoA desaturase (SCD). Such effects of pioglitazone on the c-Met signaling pathway resulted from its tyrosine phosphorylation and resultant up-regulation of the apolipoprotein B (apoB)-mediated lipid mobilization from hepatocytes through very low-density lipoprotein (VLDL) as well as down-regulation of sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP) -1c and SCD levels and a decrease in triglyceride synthesis in the liver. CONCLUSIONS Pioglitazone activates c-Met and VLDL-dependent lipid retrieval and suppresses triglyceride synthesis and thereby serves as a potentially useful stratagem to attenuate ethanol-induced hepatic steatosis.
Wavelet-Based System for Recognition and Labeling ofPolyhedral

Recognition of junctions in scenes containing polyhedral objects has been shown to be an e ective means of encoding for model based matching. However, noise and inconsistent lighting in the images limit the amount of useful information than can be extracted for junction identi cation. This paper introduces a wavelet-based system for polyhedral junction recognition that combines the waveletderived edges and line elements at multiple levels of resolution to produce a labeled image. The results of some experimental studies are also reported.
High pCO2 affects body size, but not gene expression in larvae of the California mussel (Mytilus californianus)

and Hofmann, G. E. High p CO 2 affects body size, but not gene expression in larvae of the California mussel ( Mytilus californianus ). – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 73: 962–969. Many studies have reported reductions in body size and calciﬁcation rates for marine larvae exposed to ocean acidiﬁcation conditions. However, the physiological mechanisms driving these effects, and mechanisms underlying body size variation in general, are poorly understood. Here, we combine transcriptomesequencingwithbulkedsegregantanalysistoassessthephysiologicalresponsetoacidiﬁcationinlarvaeoftheCaliforniamussel, Mytilus californianus , and to explore physiological basis of variation in larval size. We reared three families of M. californianus larvae under ambient ( (cid:2) 350 m atm, pH total 8.1) and high ( (cid:2) 1300 m atm, pH total 7.6) p CO 2 conditions, then passed larvae through a mesh ﬁlter, separating each family × p CO 2 treatment into fractions of larvae with large vs. small body sizes. We sequenced larval mRNA for each family × treatment × body size combination, and assembled a de novo transcriptome. We then mapped reads from each library to this assembly to identify effects of high p CO 2 on gene expression, and to identify transcriptomic differences between small vs. large larvae of the same age class. Although larvae reared under elevated p CO 2 were smaller, we observed no consistent effect of elevated p CO 2 on gene expression. Nevertheless, 1225 transcripts, primarily related to metabolism, were differentially expressed between large vs. small larvae, regardless of CO 2 treatment. We conclude that the observed reduction in larval body size under high CO 2 may be driven by a direct effect of the environment on phenotype, unmediated by changes in gene expression. Because M. calfornianus has evolved in the context of seasonal upwelling, exposure to 1300 m atm, p CO 2 may not produce the large stress-mediatedeffectsongeneexpressionthatmightbeexpectedforanorganismexposedtoconditionsfaroutsidethoseofitstypicalenvironment.
Modes of Gene Duplication Contribute Differently to Genetic Novelty and Redundancy, but Show Parallels across Divergent Angiosperms

Background Both single gene and whole genome duplications (WGD) have recurred in angiosperm evolution. However, the evolutionary effects of different modes of gene duplication, especially regarding their contributions to genetic novelty or redundancy, have been inadequately explored. Results In Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa (rice), species that deeply sample botanical diversity and for which expression data are available from a wide range of tissues and physiological conditions, we have compared expression divergence between genes duplicated by six different mechanisms (WGD, tandem, proximal, DNA based transposed, retrotransposed and dispersed), and between positional orthologs. Both neo-functionalization and genetic redundancy appear to contribute to retention of duplicate genes. Genes resulting from WGD and tandem duplications diverge slowest in both coding sequences and gene expression, and contribute most to genetic redundancy, while other duplication modes contribute more to evolutionary novelty. WGD duplicates may more frequently be retained due to dosage amplification, while inferred transposon mediated gene duplications tend to reduce gene expression levels. The extent of expression divergence between duplicates is discernibly related to duplication modes, different WGD events, amino acid divergence, and putatively neutral divergence (time), but the contribution of each factor is heterogeneous among duplication modes. Gene loss may retard inter-species expression divergence. Members of different gene families may have non-random patterns of origin that are similar in Arabidopsis and rice, suggesting the action of pan-taxon principles of molecular evolution. Conclusion Gene duplication modes differ in contribution to genetic novelty and redundancy, but show some parallels in taxa separated by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.