Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Smart Mobile Phone Usage Restriction by Extending Phone Circuitry — An Alternative to Jamming

The use of Jammers to restrict mobile phone usage has always been a very common application. Jammers work by blocking all communication signals in the target area. A major drawback of this approach is that a person can't be accessed even in an emergency. Furthermore, our present-day jammers have no control over other nuisance activities like loudspeakers usage in mobiles. Our proposed system overcomes both of these limitations. The core idea of the system is to incorporate an additional circuit within the mobile phone that contains a receiver exclusively meant for receiving signals to lock mobile phone's keypad and loudspeakers. In zones requiring silence, a transmitter circuit is placed for sending locking signals. The receiver within the mobile receives the locking signal, which upon successful decoding locks the keypad and loudspeaker. The applications of this idea are numerous, one of which discussed in the paper is to restrict mobile phone usage within an automobile only when the vehicle is on the move while at the same time ensuring that the driver's accessibility is not compromised. This idea has been implemented only in a basic Celkon mobile since a basic mobile provided a simplistic setting to test the feasibility of the idea faster. Extension to a smartphone can be easily achieved using the same approach.
Characterizing the Reliability and Threshold Voltage Shifting of 3D Charge Trap NAND Flash

3D charge trap (CT) triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash gradually becomes a mainstream storage component due to high storage capacity and performance, but introducing a concern about reliability. Fault tolerance and data management schemes are capable of improving reliability. Designing a more efficient solution, however, needs to understand the reliability characteristics of 3D CT TLC NAND flash. To facilitate such understanding, by exploiting a real-world testing platform, we investigate the reliability characteristics including the raw bit error rate (RBER) and the threshold voltage (Vth) shifting features after suffering from variable disturbances. We give analyses of why these characteristics exist in 3D CT TLC NAND flash. We hope these observations can guide the designers to propose high efficient solutions to the reliability problem.
Internet of Things: learning and practices. Application to Smart City

Internet of things (IoT) is a massively growing industry in todays times. In fact, more and more devices able to interact together have been recently designed and launched in the market. All the objects that we use in our daily lives are becoming smarter. Everybody agrees that the education has been dramatically changed by the internet over the past few years. Therefore, learning Internet of Things technologies is becoming unavoidable in education. It makes possible for the learners to gain knowledge from anywhere at any time. It allows students and teachers to stay connected with different means, checking messages and upcoming events. IoT can be considered as a new method for managing the teaching environment with advanced tools and establish a rapid communication between the students and teachers in the classroom. Most educators agree that it plays a crucial role in changing the educational landscape. While teachers and instructors away from the classroom, still interact with their students and even replying to posts. In this paper, we propose a practical approach allowing to progressively learn, by practice the essential concepts of Internet of Things applied to Smart Cities. From basic knowledge of python language and the use of microcontrollers Pycom such as LoPy, students can develop skills and also smart applications in the field of Internet of Things. We are interested, throughout this manuscript, to teach it to the scientific community and provide experiments on how to build architectures wherein at each layer lies a plethora of devices and services communicating to make an integrated solution. This can be a good start in the right direction and move further up the aisle to open up a new research area.
Compiling Permutations for Superconducting QPUs

In this paper we consider the compilation of quantum state permutations into quantum gates for physical quantum computers. A sequence of generic single-target gates, which realize the input permutation, are extracted using a decomposition based reversible logic synthesis algorithm. We present a compilation algorithm that translates single-target gates into a quantum circuit composed of the elementary quantum gate sets that are supported by IBM’s 5-qubit and 16-qubit, and Rigetti’s 8-qubit and 19-qubit superconducting transmon QPUs. Compared to generic state-of-the-art compilation techniques, our technique improves gate volume and gate depth by up to 59% and 53%, respectively.
Multimode Stepped-Impedance Resonator (SIR) with Central Via-Coupling for UWB Filter Design

This paper discusses a new type of planar stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) - a structure centrally loaded with a via to the ground. The novel SIR has unique properties which can be used to design wideband and ultra-wideband (UWB) filters. The shunt via provides a strong inductive coupling in the centre of the structure, which determines a new mechanism of coupling the SIR modes. The central via modifies electromagnetic field distribution of the SIR filter creating in its frequency response an additional transmission pole in the passband. It also provides a transmission zero at DC, which allows for a direct contact port coupling, with no need for the more problematic, very narrow gaps to couple the structure with input/output lines. Thanks to this, the new SIR can be successfully designed and fabricated on thin dielectric substrates. The gapless couplings require impedance matching between input/output lines and the SIR. This is realized by stepped-impedance transformer sections. Depending on the filter bandwidth, these port matching sections can be non-resonating, or begin to resonate generating additional transmission poles. These properties are discussed in the paper based on two example microstrip bandpass filters: a 4-pole 3.1 - 4.8 GHz and a 6-pole 3.1 - 10.6 GHz UWB filter.
Deep Variation Autoencoder with Topic Information for Text Similarity

Representation learning is an essential process in the text similarity task. The methods based on neural variational inference first learn the semantic representation of the texts, then measure the similarity of these texts by calculating the cosine similarity of their representations. However, it is not generally desirable that using the neural network simply to learn semantic representation as it cannot capture the rich semantic information completely. Considering that the similarity of context information reflects the similarity of text pairs in most cases, we integrate the topic information into a stacked variational autoencoder in process of text representation learning. The improved text representations are used in text similarity calculation. Experiment result shows that our approach obtains the state-of-art performance.
Some Closure Properties of Fuzzy Multiset Regular Languages

Fuzzy multiset regular languages are languages generated by fuzzy multiset regular grammars or (alternatively) accepted by fuzzy multiset finite automata. Family of fuzzy multiset regular languages is known to be closed under regular operations. The paper extends the knowledge and proves that the family is also closed under the operations of intersection, complement, and arbitrary homomorphism.
Scratchpad Memories with Ownership

A multicore processor for real-time systems needs a time-predictable way to communicate data between different threads running on different cores. Standard multicore processors support data sharing with shared main memory backed up by caches and cache coherence protocol. This sharing solution is hardly time predictable nor does it scale to more than a few cores.This paper presents a shared scratchpad memory (SPM) for time-predictable communication between cores. The base architecture uses time-division multiplexing for the arbitration of the access to the shared SPM. This allows the timing of programs executing on different cores to be completely independent of each other. We extend this architecture by the notion of ownership. A core can own the SPM. Having exclusive access to the SPM reduces the access time to a single clock cycle. The ownership of the SPM can then be transferred to a different core, implementing low latency communication of bulk data. As an extension, we propose to organize this memory as a pool of SPMs that can be owned by different cores and transferred as needed. We evaluate the proposed architecture within the T-CREST multicore architecture.
Introducing Automated Verification and Validation for Virtualized Network Functions and Services

NFV and SDN transform network management and operation into agile development tasks. They involve software artefacts, which are managed and deployed as composite services using DevOps principles. Those softwarized networks rely on complex technology stacks, starting with low-level virtualization technologies and ranging up to machine-learning-based orchestration solutions. One of the main challenges in those environments is to verify that the deployed functions and services operate correctly and meet the quality goals set by the stakeholders before they are put into production. We tackle this challenge by introducing the novel concept of a verification and validation (V&V) platform for NFV, which enables automatic testing and qualification of single network functions and complex services. By adding such a platform to the NFV ecosystem, new business models emerge, as we discuss in this article. We evaluate our proposed concepts by presenting a case study that uses our open source V&V platform to verify and validate the behavior and performance of a real-world network service.
Design of Computer Vision Based Ball Detection System on Wheeled Robot Soccer

Wheeled robot soccer is a soccer robot that moves with wheels with several capabilities, such as detecting, catching, dribbling, and kicking a ball. A robot soccer requires a system or sensor to detect a ball. The development of computer vision technology enables a computer system to detect a ball using computer vision algorithm. In this research, the system consisting of a camera and a single board computer. The camera is used to capture an image and the single board computer is used to process the image to get ball position on the image. The ball position information is then processed to map the position of the ball. After that, the information of mapping is sent to the robot controller and process it into a movement. Experiments result show that the robot with the designed system is function as designed.
Agricultural Area Classification of Small Region Satellite Image Using Convolutional Neural Network

Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is widely used to develop image classification models which are designed to recognize patterns within pixel images and CNN improves model efficiency from traditional neural network models. This paper aims to investigate several CNN structures of an image classification model on images which are agricultural areas of small polygons on transparent background. We experimented in two different directions: first, increasing the number of convolution, non-linearity and pooling layers from the basic CNN structure; and second, increasing the number of training iterations with newly randomized data as input on every iteration. From the experimental results, the latter modified structure with newly randomized data and multiple iterations shows significantly higher testing accuracies and lower loss values than those of the basic CNN structure. This structure model improved the basic CNN by relative accuracy improvements of 1.03 - 10.94%.
Dermatological side‐effects of telaprevir‐based triple therapy for chronic hepatitis C in phase III trials in Japan

Telaprevir‐based triple therapy is highly effective for chronic hepatitis C. However, concern has been expressed over the high frequency and severity of its dermatological side‐effects compared with those associated with peginterferon (PEG‐IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) therapy. Thus, here, we evaluated the dermatological adverse reactions of telaprevir‐based triple therapy in Japanese multicenter phase III clinical trials in an attempt to characterize the dermatological side‐effects and establish appropriate management plans. In these trials, 126 treatment‐naïve patients and 141 treatment‐failure patients were administrated telaprevir, PEG‐IFN‐α‐2b and RBV for 12 weeks followed by PEG‐IFN‐α‐2b and RBV for another 12 weeks (T12/PR24 group), and 63 treatment‐naïve patients were administrated PEG‐IFN‐α‐2b and RBV for 48 weeks (PR48 group). Dermatological adverse reactions developed in over 80% patients in both groups, and most of them were grade 1 or 2. In the T12/PR24 group, there were more grade 2 or grade 3 events, and the time to onset was earlier than that in the PR48 group. Most reactions could be managed with topical corticosteroids and oral antihistamines, and the rates of discontinuation due to dermatological reactions were not high even in the T12/PR24 group. In the T12/PR24 group, however, two cases of Stevens–Johnson syndrome and one case of drug rash with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms, which corresponds to drug‐induced hypersensitivity syndrome in Japan, were reported. For appropriate treatments of individual dermatological adverse reactions, the judgment of discontinuation of antiviral drugs and treatment based on the severity are extremely important in this triple therapy.
A sleep apnoea keeper in a wearable device for Continuous detection and screening during daily life

Sleep apnoea syndrome is one of the most common sleep disorders which affects around one out of every 100 people. There is some evidence that sleep apnoea may be linked to hypertension, strokes and heart attacks. The aim of this work is to develop a wearable biomedical system for the continuous and real-time monitoring of the sleep apnoea disease at home. Embedded in a comfortable glove, the proposed wearable device acquires the photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal coming from a standard SpO2 wrapped sensor placed in one of the fingers. Real-time heart rate variability analysis is performed from NN intervals measured in the PPG signal in order to activate an alarm if the number of sleep apnoea events cross a guard level. Through a radio frequency link in the ISM band, the glove communicates with a Internet gateway connected with a remote station for continuous data analysis, monitoring and alarm catch.
Use of samarium Sm 153 lexidronam for the treatment of dogs with primary tumors of the skull: 20 cases (1986-2006).

OBJECTIVE To evaluate samarium Sm 153 lexidronam ((153)Sm-EDTMP) as a treatment option for dogs with bony tumors of the skull. DESIGN Retrospective case series. ANIMALS Dogs with multilobular osteochondrosarcoma (MLO) or osteosarcoma (OSA) of the skull. PROCEDURES Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital records from the Universities of Missouri and Florida from 1986 to 2006 were searched for dogs with primary skull tumors treated with (153)Sm-EDTMP. RESULTS 25 dogs were initially evaluated, with 5 dogs subsequently excluded because of inadequate follow-up or unrelated death. Seven OSAs and 13 MLOs were diagnosed. Tumors involved the occipital and frontal bones (n = 10), zygomatic arch and maxilla region (6), palate (3), and mandible (1). No clinically important adverse effects related to (153)Sm-EDTMP treatment were documented. Of the 20 dogs evaluated 21 days after injection with (153)Sm-EDTMP, 4 had subjective improvement, 13 had progressive disease, and 3 had insufficient follow-up. On the basis of radiographic findings, metastasis was suspected in 1 dog; 16 dogs had no metastasis evident, and medical records were insufficient for 3 dogs. Survival time, defined as the (153)Sm-EDTMP injection date to the date of death, ranged from 3 to 1,314 days (median, 144 days). CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE The subjective improvement in 4 patients and lack of clinical evidence of adverse effects suggested that (153)Sm-EDTMP injection may be an option for the treatment of dogs with MLO or OSA of the skull when other treatments have failed or surgery is not possible.
Short-term continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion decreases the plasma vaspin levels in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus concomitant with improvement in insulin sensitivity.

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of short-term continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) on plasma vaspin levels in patients with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). METHOD Thirty patients with severe newly diagnosed T2DM, 37 subjects with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and 38 gender-, age- and body mass index (BMI)-matched normal GT (NGT) controls participated in the study. The T2DM group was treated with CSII for 2 weeks. Euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamps were performed in 16 subjects of the T2DM group. Plasma vaspin concentrations were measured with a commercial ELISA kit. The relationship between plasma vaspin levels and metabolic parameters was also analyzed. RESULTS Fasting plasma vaspin levels were higher in the T2DM group than in IGT and NGT groups (1.83±0.55 vs 0.51±0.21 vs 0.53±0.24 μg/l, P<0.05), but there was no difference between IGT and NGT groups. In T2DM patients, fasting plasma vaspin concentrations were significantly decreased after CSII treatment for 2 weeks (1.83±0.55 vs 1.19±0.57 μg/l, P<0.05), accompanied by significant amelioration of insulin sensitivity and glucose control. The changes in plasma vaspin levels were positively associated with the amelioration of insulin resistance (IR) shown by the changes in homeostasis model assessment of IR. CONCLUSION Plasma vaspin level is associated with IR and is significantly reduced following short-term CSII treatment.
Type 2 diabetes mellitus affects male fertility potential.

OBJECTIVE Diabetes is a syndrome that affects all the physiological systems of the body, therefore this study was undertaken to compare the seminogram parameters in diabetics and non-diabetics. STUDY DESIGN The study was carried out at Male Infertility and Reproductive Physiology unit in the Department of Physiology, MGIMS, Sevagram, Wardha. 25 normozoospermic subjects with type 2 diabetes and 25 normozoospermic non diabetic subjects were recruited in the study. The semen samples were analyzed for sperm concentration, motility and morphology. RESULTS In diabetic group the sperm concentration was 24.6 millions/ml with the motility of 52.3% and normal morphology 31.5%, while in non-diabetic group the sperm concentration was 42.7 millions/ml with 63.1% motility and 47.2% normal morphology. CONCLUSION Thus our observations indicate that there is a detrimental effect of type 2 diabetes mellitus on semen parameters.
Predominant inhibition of Th1 cytokines in New Zealand black/white F1 mice treated with FK506

The T‐helper 1/T‐helper 2 (Th1/Th2) cell balance was examined in 6‐month‐old New Zealand black/white F1 (B/WF1) mice treated with an immunosuppressive agent, FK506. The survival rate of mice treated with 10 mg/kg/day of FK506 was 7/8, while that of those treated with 2.5 mg/kg/day was 5/8, and 4/8 after treatment for 8 weeks with placebo. Proteinuria, which was already positive in all mice before the treatment, in the seven of eight mice treated with 10 mg/kg/day remained mildly positive (≤1+), while seven of eight mice treated with 2.5 mg/kg/day and six of eight mice treated with the placebo showed severe proteinuria (≥2+). Pathological changes in the kidneys of mice treated with 10 mg/kg/day of FK506 were less severe than in mice treated with the placebo or 2.5 mg/kg/day of FK506. Expression of mRNA was unchanged for all cytokines determined in the groups treated with 2.5 mg/kg/day of FK506 or placebo. In contrast, expression of mRNA for interleukin (IL)‐2, and interferon (IFN)‐γ was suppressed, while that for IL‐4 and IL‐10 was not suppressed in the group treated with 10 mg/kg of FK506. The serum levels of IgG‐class anti‐DNA antibodies, which had been elevated before the treatment, were suppressed — especially in the IgG2a subclass — and the deposition of IgG2a and IgG2b in the glomeruli was reduced in the group treated with 10 mg/kg/day of FK506 compared with the other groups. These findings suggest that an improvement in the lupus nephritis of 6‐month‐old B/WF1 mice induced by FK506 might be associated with a predominant inhibition of Th1 cytokine.
Pain and the alpha-sleep anomaly: a mechanism of sleep disruption in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy.

OBJECTIVE To measure the presence of the alpha-sleep anomaly in facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) and to evaluate the association between the sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern and the presence of musculoskeletal pain. DESIGN Cross-sectional study. SETTING Sleep laboratory. SUBJECTS Fifty-five consecutive adult FSHD patients, 26 women and 29 men, age 49.6 ± 15.1 years (range 18-76). INTERVENTIONS Questionnaires and polysomnography. OUTCOME MEASURES Patients were asked to indicate if in the 3 months before the sleep study they presented persisting or recurring musculoskeletal pain. Patients who reported pain were asked to fill in the Italian version of the Brief Pain Inventory and the McGill Pain questionnaire, and a 101-point visual analog scale (VAS) for pain intensity. Polysomnographic recordings were performed. EEG was analyzed by means of Fast Fourier Transform. Four power spectra bands (δ 0-4 Hz, θ 4-8 Hz, α 8-14 Hz, β 14-32 Hz) were computed. Sleep macrostructure parameters and alpha/delta EEG power ratio during non rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep were compared between patients with and without pain. RESULTS Forty-two patients in our sample reported chronic pain. VAS mean score was 55.2 ± 23.8 (range 10-100), pain rating index score was 13.8 ± 10.2, and present pain intensity was 2.5 ± 0.8. The statistical analysis documented an increased occurrence of the alpha and beta rhythms during NREM sleep in FSHD patients with pain. Significant correlations were observed between the alpha/delta power ratio during NREM sleep and pain measures. CONCLUSIONS Chronic musculoskeletal pain is frequent in FSHD patients, and it represents a major mechanism of sleep disruption.
CD8+ T Lymphocytes Mediate Borna Disease Virus-Induced Immunopathology Independently of Perforin

ABSTRACT Perforin-mediated lysis of target cells is the major antiviral effector mechanism of CD8+ T lymphocytes. We have analyzed the role of perforin in a mouse model for CD8+T-cell-mediated central nervous system (CNS) immunopathology induced by Borna disease virus. When a defective perforin gene was introduced into the genetic background of the Borna disease-susceptible mouse strain MRL, the resulting perforin-deficient mice developed strong neurological disease in response to infection indistinguishable from that of their perforin-expressing littermates. The onset of disease was slightly delayed. Brains of diseased perforin-deficient mice showed similar amounts and a similar distribution of CD8+ T cells as wild-type animals. Perforin deficiency had no impact on the kinetics of viral spread through the CNS. Unlike brain lymphocytes from diseased wild-type mice, lymphocytes from perforin-deficient MRL mice showed no in vitro cytolytic activity towards target cells expressing the nucleoprotein of Borna disease virus. Taken together, these results demonstrate that CD8+ T cells mediate Borna disease independent of perforin. They further suggest that the pathogenic potential of CNS-infiltrating CD8+ T cells does not primarily reside in their lytic activity but rather in other functions.