Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 32-nm CMOS Frequency Locked Loop for 20-GHz Synthesis with ± 7.6 ppm Resolution

In this work, a digitally assisted frequency locked loop is implemented using 32-nm CMOS technology and acts as a 20-GHz frequency synthesizer. The frequency difference between the reference clock and the VCO output is obtained using a pair of 18- bit counters. Also, an offset value is added to the counter output to tune the VCO frequency in closed loop. The frequency synthesizer resolution is ± 7.6 p.p.m. over a measured locking range equal to 300 MHz.
Preeclampsia: multiple approaches for a multifactorial disease

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific disorder characterized by hypertension and excess protein excretion in the urine. It is an important cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality worldwide. The disease is almost exclusive to humans and delivery of the pregnancy continues to be the only effective treatment. The disorder is probably multifactorial, although most cases of preeclampsia are characterized by abnormal maternal uterine vascular remodeling by fetally derived placental trophoblast cells. Numerous in vitro and animal models have been used to study aspects of preeclampsia, the most common being models of placental oxygen dysregulation, abnormal trophoblast invasion, inappropriate maternal vascular damage and anomalous maternal-fetal immune interactions. Investigations into the pathophysiology and treatment of preeclampsia continue to move the field forward, albeit at a frustratingly slow pace. There remains a pressing need for novel approaches, new disease models and innovative investigators to effectively tackle this complex and devastating disorder.
Knowledge-based systems analysis and design - a KADS developer's handbook

KADS EXPLAINED IN DETAIL. Overview of Analysis. Analysis Activities and Results. Analysis: The Big Picture. Overview of Design. Design Activities and Results. Design: The Big Picture. General Techniques and Tools. Putting it all Together: Using KADS in Your Project. KADS FOR DAY-TO-DAY USE. Library of Domain Roles and Inference Types. Library of Generic Task Models. Library of Problem-solving Methods and Knowledge Representations. KBS Implementation Environments and KADS. Guided Tour of KADS Analysis. Guided Tour of KADS Design. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. Appendices. Summary of Notations.
Simultaneous Optical and Near-Infrared Spectropolarimetry of Type 2 Seyfert Galaxies

We present optical and near-infrared spectropolarimetry of the nuclei of four type 2 Seyfert galaxies, Mrk 463E, Mrk 1210, NGC 1068, and NGC 4388. The data were obtained simultaneously, covering the wavelength range of 0.46-2.5 μm. We model the polarizations from two dust-scattering components: (1) scattering in dusty regions in ionization cones and (2) scattering in a torus surrounding a type 1 nucleus. The polarizations from electron scattering in the cones and dichroic absorption by aligned dust grains in the torus are also compared with the observations. We confirmed that a combination of electron and dust scattering in the ionization cones is the preferred mechanism for the optical continuum polarization. For the near-infrared, dichroic absorption by aligned grains can explain the continuum polarization of Mrk 463E and Mrk 1210 as well as NGC 1068. Visual optical depths of the order of 10-20 are estimated for dichroic absorption in these nuclei. Dust scattering in the torus, whose grain size distribution is assumed to be the same as in the Galactic diffuse interstellar medium, cannot reproduce the observed spectral slope of the near-infrared polarization and total nuclear flux simultaneously. However, this might only indicate that the grain size distribution in the torus of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is different, and dust scattering with moderate optical depth and dominated by large grains might provide a reasonable explanation for the near-infrared radiation from AGNs.
A novel calmodulin-binding protein, belonging to the WD-repeat family, is localized in dendrites of a subset of CNS neurons

A rat brain synaptosomal protein of 110,000 M(r) present in a fraction highly enriched in adenylyl cyclase activity was microsequenced (Castets, F., G. Baillat, S. Mirzoeva, K. Mabrouk, J. Garin, J. d'Alayer, and A. Monneron. 1994. Biochemistry. 33:5063-5069). Peptide sequences were used to clone a cDNA encoding a novel, 780-amino acid protein named striatin. Striatin is a member of the WD-repeat family (Neer, E.J., C.J. Schmidt, R. Nambudripad, and T.F. Smith. 1994. Nature (Lond.). 371:297-300), the first one known to bind calmodulin (CaM) in the presence of Ca++. Subcellular fractionation shows that striatin is a membrane-associated, Lubrol-soluble protein. As analyzed by Northern blots, in situ hybridization, and immunocytochemistry, striatin is localized in the central nervous system, where it is confined to a subset of neurons, many of which are associated with the motor system. In particular, striatin is conspicuous in the dorsal part of the striatum, as well as in motoneurons. Furthermore, striatin is essentially found in dendrites, but not in axons, and is most abundant in dendritic spines. We propose that striatin interacts, through its WD- repeat domain and in a CaM/Ca(++)-dependent manner, with one or several members of a surrounding cluster of molecules engaged in a Ca(++)- signaling pathway specific to excitatory synapses.
M ar 2 00 6 Disordered Electron Systems

These lectures provide an introduction to the theory of disordered interacting electron systems. As for the case of superconductivity, the understanding of the behavior of transport and thermodynamical properties of metals and semiconductors has required the invention of new and fascinating concepts. In these lectures our focus is mainly on the effects of disorder, and its interplay with electron-electron interaction. The resulting theory, although still cannot answer some important questions, is simple and elegant. It describes the combined effects of interaction and disorder in terms of a renormalized Fermi liquid, whose Landau parameters become scale dependent and provide, together with the conductance, the couplings flowing under the action of the renormalization group. However, this final simple description, which has required several decades of intensive work from many people, is built on several conceptual steps. It is our aim to lead the reader through the development of these various steps. Our hope is that the reading of these lectures should allow people not expert in the field to access the original literature. There are already several review articles which give an account of the problem from different view points and at different stages of the historical development [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. However, the most recent and complete are still quite hard to read for unprepared
The effect of aloe emodin–encapsulated nanoliposome‐mediated r‐caspase‐3 gene transfection and photodynamic therapy on human gastric cancer cells

Gastric carcinoma (GC) has high incidence and mortality rates in China. Surgery and chemotherapy are the main treatments. Photodynamic therapy (PDT) has become a new treatment modality, appearing in recent experimental studies and clinical trials in various tumors. This study explores the combined effect of gene transfection with PDT on GC cells using aloe emodin (AE)–encapsulated nanoliposomes, which acted as gene carrier as well as one photosensitizer (PS). AE‐encapsulated nanoliposomes (nano‐AE) were prepared by reverse evaporation method. Electron microscopy and nano‐ZS90 analyzer were used to detect its morphology, size, and wavelength. Western blot was used to detect the expression of the caspase‐3 after transfection. MTT assay and flow cytometry were employed to determine the cytotoxic and apoptotic rates, respectively. Hoechst 33342 staining was adopted to detect the morphological changes in death gastric cancer cells. Cellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) contents were measured by DCFH‐DA staining. Outcomes demonstrated that the nano‐AE has good properties as gene delivery carriers as well as a PS. The group in which the recombinant plasmid of r‐caspase‐3 was transfected had higher protein expression of the caspase‐3 than controls, meanwhile the proliferation rates of the transfected cells were inhibited by the nano‐AE‐mediated PDT in an energy‐dependent manner. In addition, in the transfected cells, the death rate increased to 77.3% as assessed 12 h after PDT (6.4 J/cm2). Hochest 33342 staining also revealed that the death rate increased significantly in the transfected group compared with other groups. Compared to control groups, the production of ROS in nano‐AE PDT group had quadrupled in SGC‐7901 cells as early as 1 h after PDT, while it is similar to the group of nano‐AE transfection and PDT. Nano‐AE‐mediated r‐caspase‐3 gene transfection coupled with PDT could inhibit the proliferation rate and increase the apoptotic rate remarkably in human gastric cancer cells.
Customer Satisfaction, Cash Flow, and Shareholder Value

In this article, the authors strengthen the chain of effects that link customer satisfaction to shareholder value by establishing the link between satisfaction and two characteristics of future cash flows that determine the value of the firm to shareholders: growth and stability. Using longitudinal American Customer Satisfaction Index and COMPUSTAT data and hierarchical Bayesian estimation, the authors find that satisfaction creates shareholder value by increasing future cash flow growth and reducing its variability. They test the stability of findings across several firm and industry characteristics, and they assess the robustness of the results using multimeasure and multimethod estimation.
How to Explore a Fast-Changing World

Motivated by real world networks and use of algorithms based on random walks on these networks we study the simple random walks on dynamic undirected graphs, i.e., graphs which are modified by inserting or deleting edges at every step of the walk. We are interested in the expected time needed to visit all the vertices of such a dynamic graph, the cover time, under the assumption that the graph is being modified by an oblivious adversary. It is well known that on static undirected graphs the cover time is polynomial in the size of the graph, on the contrary and somewhat counter-intuitively, we show that there are adversary strategies which force the expected cover time of dynamic graphs to be exponential, and relate this result to the cover time of static directed graphs. In addition we provide a simple strategy, the lazy random walk, that guarantees polynomial cover time regardless of the changes made by the adversary.
Toward a Critical Race Perspective of Transfer: An Exploration of a Transfer Receptive Culture

ABSTRACT In this study we highlight the five elements of a transfer receptive culture and its connection to the Summer Transfer Enrichment Program (STEP) administered by the Community College Outreach Center (CCOC) at Best Coast University (all pseudonyms). A quantitative and qualitative study was conducted focusing on five years of STEP, consisting of 87 participants (70% female, 30% male), with 90% identifying as students of color (the majority Latinx1). Fifty-six students completed a survey and 22 participated in focus group interviews. Through Critical Race Theory we found that this program embodies four out of the five transfer receptive culture elements. Students felt reassured by the longevity and presence of CCOC and that STEP addressed fears and misconceptions about transferring. In addition, students felt financially and academically supported along with being validated through coursework and workshops that were similar to their life experiences.
Simulation of 2.4 GHz Low-Power CMOS LC Quadrature Voltage Controlled Oscillator

This paper presents the simulation analysis of a 2.4 GHz Quadrature Voltage Controlled Oscillator (QVCO), for low-power, low-voltage applications. Cross coupled LC VCO (Inductor-Capacitor Voltage Controlled Oscillator) topology is utilized to realize QVCO. With the passive coupling achieved from the MOS transistors, power consumption is minimized while maintaining a small chip area. The variable capacitors and the inductors are designed using ANSYS and imported through DAC components in ADS (Advanced Design software). Accurate simulation of the QVCO is performed in the software environments and the results are provided. This QVCO provides quadrature signals at 2.4 GHz, achieves a peak to peak voltage of 0.65 volts with a simulated low power consumption of 5.8 mA from a power supply voltage of 0.6 volts. The simulated QVCO produces frequency tuning from 2.1 GHz to 2.60 GHz (20.83%) with a control voltage varying from 0-0.3 volts. The output power level of the QVCO is -7 dBm, with an improved predicted quality factor of 60 and a phase noise of -134 dBc/Hz, 1MHz far from the carrier frequency.
Optimized prophet address allocation (OPAA) for Body Area Networks

Each node in a Body Area Network (BAN) needs to be assigned with a free IP address before it may participate in any sort of communication. This paper evaluates the performance of an IP address allocation scheme, namely Prophet allocation to be used for BANs. This allocation scheme is a fully decentralized addressing scheme which is applicable to BANs as it provides low latency, low communication overhead and low complexity. Relative theoretical analysis and simulation experiments have also been conducted to demonstrate its benefits which also represent the reason for the choice of this allocation scheme. It also solves the issues related to network partition and merger efficiently.
The ‘Pokemon’ (ZBTB7) Gene: No Evidence of Association with Sporadic Breast Cancer

It has been proposed that the excess of familiar risk associated with breast cancer could be explained by the cumulative effect of multiple weakly predisposing alleles. The transcriptional repressor FBI1, also known as Pokemon, has recently been identified as a critical factor in oncogenesis. This protein is encoded by the ZBTB7 gene. Here we aimed to determine whether polymorphisms in ZBTB7 are associated with breast cancer risk in a sample of cases and controls collected in hospitals from North and Central Spanish patients. We genotyped 15 SNPs in ZBTB7, including the flanking regions, with an average coverage of 1 SNP/2.4 Kb, in 360 sporadic breast cancer cases and 402 controls. Comparison of allele, genotype and haplotype frequencies between cases and controls did not reveal associations using Pearson's chi-square test and a permutation procedure to correct for multiple test. In this, the first study of the ZBTB7 gene in relation to, sporadic breast cancer, we found no evidence of an association.
A new reactor circuit to improve the input power quality in switched reluctance motor drive

This paper deals with an input power quality improvement in an Asymmetric Converter based switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive at ac mains using a Reactor circuit. Normally an asymmetric converter is used as a power converter for SRM drive. Conventionally three phase ac mains fed bridge rectifier is used as a dc source to feed this power converter which produces high content of harmonics at ac mains with a very low power factor. The proposed circuits with an asymmetric converter fed SRM drive enhance the power factor at ac mains with low current harmonics. By this method we can get almost constant dc link voltage which can be applied to the converter. The proposed SRM drive is modelled and its performance is simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment. The performance of the reactor circuit topology is compared with a conventional SRM drive to demonstrate improved power quality at ac mains.
How and why scholars cite on Twitter

Scholars are increasingly using the microblogging service Twitter as a communication platform. Since citing is a central practice of scholarly communication, we investigated whether and how scholars cite on Twitter. We conducted interviews and harvested 46,515 tweets from a sample of 28 scholars and found that they do cite on Twitter, though often indirectly. Twitter citations are part of a fast-moving conversation that participants believe reflects scholarly impact. Twitter citation metrics could augment traditional citation analysis, supporting a "scientometrics 2.0. "
Automatic detection of the mid-sagittal plane in 3-D brain images

This article presents a detailed description of an algorithm for the automatic detection of the mid-sagittal plane in three-dimensional (3-D) brain images. The algorithm seeks the plane with respect to which the image exhibits maximum symmetry. For a given plane, symmetry is measured by the cross-correlation between the image sections lying on either side. The search for the plane of maximum symmetry is performed by using a multiresolution approach which substantially decreases computational time. The choice of the starting plane was found to be an important issue in optimization. A method for selecting the initial plane is presented. The algorithm has been tested on brain images from various imaging modalities in both humans and animals. Results were evaluated by visual inspection by neuroradiologists and were judged to be consistently correct.
Driver distraction detection and recognition using RGB-D sensor

Abstract—Driver inattention assessment has become a veryactive ﬁeld in intelligent transportation systems. Based on activesensor Kinect and computer vision tools, we have built an efﬁcientmodule for detecting driver distraction and recognizing the typeof distraction. Based on color and depth map data from theKinect, our system is composed of four sub-modules. We callthem eye behavior (detecting gaze and blinking), arm position (isthe right arm up, down, right of forward), head orientation, andfacial expressions. Each module produces relevant informationfor assessing driver inattention. They are merged together lateron using two different classiﬁcation strategies: AdaBoost classiﬁerand Hidden Markov Model. Evaluation is done using a drivingsimulator and 8 drivers of different gender, age and nationalityfor a total of more than 8 hours of recording. Qualitative andquantitative results show strong and accurate detection andrecognition capacity (85% accuracy for the type of distractionand 90% for distraction detection). Moreover, each module isobtained independently and could be used for other types ofinference, such as fatigue detection, and could be implementedfor real cars systems.
Simultaneous Discriminative Training and Mixture Splitting of HMMs for Speech Recognition

A method is proposed to incorporate mixture density splitting into the acoustic model discriminative training for speech recognition. The standard method is to obtain a high resolution acoustic model by maximum likelihood training and density splitting, and then improving this model by discriminative training. We choose a log-linear form of acoustic model because for a single Gaussian density per triphone state the log-linear MMI optimization is a convex optimization problem, and by further splitting and discriminative training of this model we can get a higher complexity model. Previously it was shown that we achieve large gains in the objective function and corresponding moderate gains in the word error rate on a large vocabulary corpus. This paper incorporates the state of the art minimum phone error training criterion into the framework, and shows that after discriminative splitting, a subsequent log-linear MPE training achieves better results than Gaussian mixture model MPE optimization alone.
Implementation of geocast-enhanced AODV-bis routing protocol in MANET

Mobile ad hoc network (MANET) represents a complex distributed system that enables seamless internetwork in areas with no pre-existing communications infrastructure. Far less effort has been done on the real-world basis, with intensive evaluations through simulations. This paper outlines our experiences with the implementation of MANET testbed based on geocast-enhanced AODV-bis module. AODV-bis is an improved design of MANET routing protocol, from the lessons learned beyond the experimental RFC AODV effort. The main goal of our research is to develop and verify the practicality of AODV-bis (ad-hoc on-demand distance vector-bis) routing protocol, featuring path accumulation. To enhance AODV-bis, location information is utilized during route discovery to limit forwarding zone by geocasting. It can be done with only little modification of packet format. We found that AODV-bis, compared to AODV, is a more powerful routing protocol especially in disseminating route information. Its overall performance is further improved with the aid of geocasting.
Bayesian probabilistic approach for predicting backbone structures in terms of protein blocks

By using an unsupervised cluster analyzer, we have identified a local structural alphabet composed of 16 folding patterns of five consecutive Cα (“protein blocks”). The dependence that exists between successive blocks is explicitly taken into account. A Bayesian approach based on the relation protein block‐amino acid propensity is used for prediction and leads to a success rate close to 35%. Sharing sequence windows associated with certain blocks into “sequence families” improves the prediction accuracy by 6%. This prediction accuracy exceeds 75% when keeping the first four predicted protein blocks at each site of the protein. In addition, two different strategies are proposed: the first one defines the number of protein blocks in each site needed for respecting a user‐fixed prediction accuracy, and alternatively, the second one defines the different protein sites to be predicted with a user‐fixed number of blocks and a chosen accuracy. This last strategy applied to the ubiquitin conjugating enzyme (α/β protein) shows that 91% of the sites may be predicted with a prediction accuracy larger than 77% considering only three blocks per site. The prediction strategies proposed improve our knowledge about sequence‐structure dependence and should be very useful in ab initio protein modelling. Proteins 2000;41:271–287. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Motion Estimation Using a General Purpose Neural Network Simulator for Visual Attention

Motion detection and estimation is a first step in the much larger framework of attending to visual motion based on Selective Tuning Model of Visual Attention (Tsotsos, et al., 2002). In order to be able to detect and estimate complex motion in a hierarchical system it is necessary to use robust and efficient methods which encapsulate as much information as possible about the motion together with a measure of reliability of that information. One such method is the orientation tensor formalism which incorporates a confidence measure that propagates into subsequent processing steps. The tensor method is implemented in a neural network simulator which allows distributed processing and visualization of results. As output we obtain information about the moving objects from the scene
Static output feedback control synthesis for nonlinear polynomial fuzzy systems using a sum of squares approach

This paper addresses the static output feedback control synthesis problem for nonlinear polynomial fuzzy systems using a sum of squares (SOS) approach. The open-loop nonlinear systems is represented in the polynomial fuzzy model. By considering the closed-loop system in the output feedback control scheme and the polynomial Lyapunov functions that contain quadratic Lyapunov functions as special cases, sufficient conditions for a solution to the problems of stability analysis and control design can be derived in the representation form of the SOS. It can be numerically solved via the SOSTOOLS.