Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A 25-Gbit/s high-speed optical-electrical printed circuit board for chip-to-chip optical interconnections

A high-speed opto-electronic printed circuit board (OEPCB) composed of a polymer waveguide and an optical module is conceptually proposed and prototyped. The fabricated OEPCB prototype provides highly efficient optical coupling characteristics (> -1 dB) and large optical-coupling tolerance (> +/-15 μm). It demonstrated 25-Gbit/s high-speed optical-signal transmission through a 10-cm-long multi-mode polymer waveguide. This performance result indicates that the OEPCB is suitable for next-generation high-speed and high-density chip-to-chip optical interconnection.
Automated Quality Assessment of Metadata across Open Data Portals

The Open Data movement has become a driver for publicly available data on the Web. More and more data—from governments and public institutions but also from the private sector—are made available online and are mainly published in so-called Open Data portals. However, with the increasing number of published resources, there is a number of concerns with regards to the quality of the data sources and the corresponding metadata, which compromise the searchability, discoverability, and usability of resources. In order to get a more complete picture of the severity of these issues, the present work aims at developing a generic metadata quality assessment framework for various Open Data portals: We treat data portals independently from the portal software frameworks by mapping the specific metadata of three widely used portal software frameworks (CKAN, Socrata, OpenDataSoft) to the standardized Data Catalog Vocabulary metadata schema. We subsequently define several quality metrics, which can be evaluated automatically and in an efficient manner. Finally, we report findings based on monitoring a set of over 260 Open Data portals with 1.1M datasets. This includes the discussion of general quality issues, for example, the retrievability of data, and the analysis of our specific quality metrics.
An Adaptive IO Prefetching Approach for Virtualized Data Centers

Cloud and data center applications often make heavy use of virtualized servers, where flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) have become popular alternatives over hard drives for data-intensive applications. Traditional data prefetching focuses on applications running on bare metal systems using hard drives. In contrast, virtualized systems using SSDs present different challenges for data prefetching. Most existing prefetching techniques, if applied unchanged in such environments, are likely to either fail to fully utilize SSDs, interfere with virtual machine I/O requests, or cause too much overhead if run in every virtualized instance.In this work, we demonstrate that data prefetching, when run in a virtualization-friendly manner can provide significant performance benefits for a wide range of data-intensive applications. We have designed and developed VIO-prefetching, consisting of accurate prediction of application needs in runtime and adaptive feedback-directed prefetching that scales with application needs, while being considerate to underlying storage devices and host systems. We have implemented a real system in Linux and evaluated it on different storage devices with the virtualization layer.Our comprehensive study provides insights of VIO-prefetching’s behavior at various virtualization system configurations, e.g., the number of VMs, in-guest processes, application types, etc. The proposed method improves virtual I/O performance up to 43 percent with the average of 14 percent for 1 to 12 VMs while running various applications on a Xen virtualization system.
Ergonomic comparison of laparoscopic hand instruments in a single site surgery simulator with novices

Abstract Background: Single-site surgery improves cosmesis but increases procedural difficulty. Enhanced instruments could improve procedural efficiency leading to better patient outcomes. Material and methods: One pair of non-articulating (straight) and two different pairs of articulating laparoscopic instruments were evaluated using a peg-transfer surgical task simulator by premedical college students. The instruments were comparatively tested using task performance measures, ergonomic measures, and participant questionnaires. Results: The straight instrument produced significantly higher task performance scores and lower task times compared to both articulating instruments (p < 0.05). The straight instrument required less muscle activation and less wrist deviation than the articulating instruments to perform the same task. Participants rated the straight instrument significantly easier to use and less difficult to complete the task than with either articulating instrument (p < 0.05 for both). Conclusions: This exploratory study suggests that novices have difficulty using articulating instruments and perform better using straight laparoscopic instruments when first attempting LESS surgical tasks. Although a study with post-graduate medical trainees is needed to confirm these results, trainees should initially practice LESS with non-articulating instruments to gain proficiency at basic laparoscopic tasks. Additionally, redesigning articulating instruments to specifically address the spatial constraints and learning curve of LESS may also improve trainee performance and instrument usability.
A feeds-based analysis of OSN activities

Feeds are user-generated contents or actions in online social network (OSN). Users generate feeds for self-expression and view feeds generated by friends. In this paper, we try to analyze activities of users in one OSN by exploring two aspects: whether users are becoming inactive in generating feeds, and how these inactive users affect the feeds received by other users and thus cause collapse of the whole social network. We study the life cycle and feed inter-event time of users in a community of RenRen, and find that more and more users are decreasing the activity in generating feeds and as a result it causes the decrease of velocity and diversity of feeds received by users. Our simulation shows when 30% of users become inactive in generating feeds, the whole community will be affected and collapse in a short time.
Efficient diagnosis of path delay faults in digital logic circuits

A novel methodology involving effect-cause analysis has been demonstrated for the diagnosis of path delay faults. We seek to provide an improved understanding of the methods introduced by Y. -C. Hsu and S.K. Gupta (1998), with the goal of devising efficient representations and algorithms for the diagnosis of path delay faults. Results indicate that the diagnostic resolution obtained is very high and includes all possible causes of the observed delay faults.
Expression of the Complement Receptors CR1 and CR3 and the Type III Fcγ Receptor on Neutrophils from Newborn Infants and from Fetuses with Rh Disease

ABSTRACT: Developmental defects in neutrophil function, including diminished expression of plasma membrane receptors, may play an important role in the susceptibility of the newborn infant to infection. We used monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry to study the expression of complement receptor type one (CR1), complement receptor type three (CR3), and Fcγ receptor type three (FcRIII) on neutrophils from six fetuses with Rh disease, 10 preterm infants, nine term infants, and nine adults. Expression of the complement receptors on unstimulated cells was similar for all groups, but significant diffences in complement receptor expression were observed after stimulation with N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (FMLP). Fetal, preterm, and term infant neutrophils expressed less CR3 than FMLP-stimulated neutrophils of adults [61 ± 2, 48 ± 4, and 66 ± 4% (mean ± SEM) of the mean for adults, p < 0.05]. FMLP-stimulated CR1 expression for these groups was 61 ± 6, 73 ± 6, and 91 ± 9% of the adult mean (p < 0.05, fetal versus term infant and adult). Expression of both CR3 and CR1 increased with postconceptional age in the infants (r2 = 0.49, p < 0.001 for CR3; r2 = 0.23, p < 0.05 for CR1). Neutrophils of the preterm and term infants expressed less FcRIII than adult neutrophils (68 ± 10 and 77 ± 7% of the adult mean, p < 0.05, for FMLP-stimulated cells), whereas fetal neutrophil FcRIII expression did not differ from that of the adult. The fluorescence distributions showed a peak for eosinophils that was distinct from the FMLP-stimulated neutrophil peak, allowing separate analysis for the two cell types. Eosinophils constituted an unexpectedly large proportion of granulocytes in fetuses with Rh disease, averaging 61% of granulocytes in seven specimens at 20 to 26 wks gestation and 37% in 11 specimens at 28 to 34 wks.
Optimizing the Number of Electrodes with High-rate Stimulation of the Clarion CII Cochlear Implant

Objective—This blind crossover study evaluates the effect of the number of electrodes of the Clarion CII cochlear implant on speech perception in silence and in noise using a “high-rate” continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy. Material and Methods—Nine users of this implant with 3–11 months of experience of an 8-channel CIS strategy [833 pulses per second (pps)/channel, 75 μs/phase] were fitted in a random order with 8-, 12- and 16-channel CIS strategies (±1400 pps/channel, 21 μs/phase). After 1 month of exclusive use of each strategy the performance was tested with consonant–vowel–consonant words in silence (sound only) and in speech-shaped background noise with signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of +10, +5, 0 and −5 dB. Results—With “high-rate” strategies most patients’ speech understanding in noise improved, although the optimum number of electrodes was highly variable. Generally, faster performers benefited from more active electrodes, whilst slower performers deteriorated. If each patient's optimal strategy was determined by a weighted sum of the test results at +10, +5 and 0 dB SNR, the average phoneme score improved from 57% to 72% at a SNR of +5 dB, and from 46% to 56% at a SNR of 0 dB. The average phoneme score in silence was ≈85% for all strategies. Conclusion—We conclude that speech perception (especially in noise) can improve significantly with “high-rate” speech processing strategies, provided that the optimum number of electrodes is determined for each patient individually.
High Performance Tag Singulation for Memory-Less RFID Systems

The simple and cheap memory-less RFID tag systems have found many diverse applications. The available singulation algorithms for such systems adopt either single-slot or multi-slot frames with a fixed frame size, independent of tag population. A single-slot scheme has good performance in terms of the number of overall slots N, but it can cause a very large number of requests R. A multi-slot scheme, on the other hand, achieves good performance of R, but it may introduce an unacceptable large N. In this paper, we propose an adaptive frame size singulation scheme for memory-less RFID systems. Our basic idea is to adaptively choose a suitable frame size based on tag population information collected during the singulation, such that the number of unnecessary collision and idle slots can be reduced. Analytical models are also derived for the performance analysis of the new scheme. Surprisingly, our theoretical and simulation studies indicated that through adopting such adaptive frame size, the new singulation scheme can achieve a performance of N as good as the single-slot scheme, and at same time, guarantees a performance of R similar to the available multi-slot schemes.
New Measurement Methods of Network Robustness and Response Ability via Microarray Data

“Robustness”, the network ability to maintain systematic performance in the face of intrinsic perturbations, and “response ability”, the network ability to respond to external stimuli or transduce them to downstream regulators, are two important complementary system characteristics that must be considered when discussing biological system performance. However, at present, these features cannot be measured directly for all network components in an experimental procedure. Therefore, we present two novel systematic measurement methods – Network Robustness Measurement (NRM) and Response Ability Measurement (RAM) – to estimate the network robustness and response ability of a gene regulatory network (GRN) or protein-protein interaction network (PPIN) based on the dynamic network model constructed by the corresponding microarray data. We demonstrate the efficiency of NRM and RAM in analyzing GRNs and PPINs, respectively, by considering aging- and cancer-related datasets. When applied to an aging-related GRN, our results indicate that such a network is more robust to intrinsic perturbations in the elderly than in the young, and is therefore less responsive to external stimuli. When applied to a PPIN of fibroblast and HeLa cells, we observe that the network of cancer cells possesses better robustness than that of normal cells. Moreover, the response ability of the PPIN calculated from the cancer cells is lower than that from healthy cells. Accordingly, we propose that generalized NRM and RAM methods represent effective tools for exploring and analyzing different systems-level dynamical properties via microarray data. Making use of such properties can facilitate prediction and application, providing useful information on clinical strategy, drug target selection, and design specifications of synthetic biology from a systems biology perspective.
Emotional, Cognitive and Self-Enhancement Processes in Aggressive Behavior After Interpersonal Rejection and Exclusion

The relationship between exclusion or rejection and aggression is already well documented, but there is still a debate about the mechanisms that underlie this effect. In two studies we focused on the propensity to react aggressively (readiness for aggression) on the bases of emotional, cognitive or self-enhancement (personality-immanent) processes. In both studies we first measured readiness for aggression and then ego-depleted participants. Next, in Study 1 we excluded participants (n = 96) using an online ball throwing game and measured displaced aggressive behavior - intensity and duration of an unpleasant noise administrated to a stranger. In Study 2 participants (n = 140) were rejected by a peer on the basis of an interview that they gave and then could retaliate by reducing peer's chance for getting a job. The results show that exclusion effect on displaced aggression was moderated by cognitive readiness for aggression, while rejection effect on retaliatory aggression was shaped by emotional and personality-immanent readiness for aggression as well as ego-depletion. The results were discussed in light of the strength model of self-control by Baumeister, Vohs, and Tice (2007).
Glomerular monocytes predict worse outcomes after acute renal allograft rejection independent of C4d status.

BACKGROUND Both peritubular capillary (PTC) C4d deposition and macrophage/monocyte (MO) infiltration in acute rejection (AR) have separately been shown to be associated with reduced graft survival and recently were demonstrated to be closely correlated in AR. Whether MO infiltration is an independent predictor of graft outcome is uncertain. METHODS All patients with biopsy-proven AR (over a 3-year period) were included (N= 96). All biopsies (N= 121) were graded according to the Banff 97 criteria and immunohistochemically stained for C4d and MO (CD68). The primary outcome was glomerular filtration rate (GFR) <30 mL/min 1-year posttransplant as estimated by the Modified Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD) Formula. Secondary outcomes at 2 and 4 years' posttransplant were also explored. A variety of clinical and biopsy variables were statistically analyzed to establish univariate predictors of graft outcome. Stepwise multivariate logistic regression modeling was applied to determine independent predictors of outcomes. RESULTS There was a close correlation between PTC C4d and glomerular MO infiltration (P < 0.001). Univariate predictors of primary outcome (GFR <30 mL/min 1-year posttransplant) included mean glomerular MO count > or =1.0 MO/glomerulus (P= 0.014), female sex (P= 0.02), higher peak (P= 0.005), and pretransplant (P= 0.003) panel-reactive antibody levels, cadaveric donor (P= 0.006), transplant glomerulitis (P= 0.004), and longer cold ischemic time (CIT) (P= 0.002). Mean MO/glomerulus > or =1.0 [OR 10.3 (1.23, 87.1)], female sex [OR 5.27(1.31, 21.1)], and CIT [OR 1.14 (1.06, 1.25)] were identified as independent predictors of adverse graft outcome. Furthermore, mean MO/glomerulus > or =1.0 independently predicted poor renal function at 2 years [OR 3.89 (1.19, 12.70)] and 4 years [OR 4.03 (1.22, 13.28)] posttransplant. CONCLUSION The results demonstrate that glomerular MO infiltration is an independent predictor of worse outcomes posttransplant following acute renal allograft rejection.
Piezo1, a mechanically activated ion channel, is required for vascular development in mice

Significance Ion channels that are activated by mechanical force have been implicated in numerous physiological systems. In mammals, the identity of these channels remains poorly understood. We recently described Piezos as evolutionarily conserved mechanically activated ion channels and showed that Piezo2 is required for activation of touch receptors in the skin. Here we show that Piezo1 is a critical component of endothelial cell mechanotransduction and is required for embryonic development. Piezo1 is expressed in embryonic endothelial cells and is activated by fluid shear stress. Loss of Piezo1 affects the ability of endothelial cells to alter their alignment when subjected to shear stress. These results suggest a potential role for Piezo1 in mechanotransduction in adult cardiovascular function and disease. Mechanosensation is perhaps the last sensory modality not understood at the molecular level. Ion channels that sense mechanical force are postulated to play critical roles in a variety of biological processes including sensing touch/pain (somatosensation), sound (hearing), and shear stress (cardiovascular physiology); however, the identity of these ion channels has remained elusive. We previously identified Piezo1 and Piezo2 as mechanically activated cation channels that are expressed in many mechanosensitive cell types. Here, we show that Piezo1 is expressed in endothelial cells of developing blood vessels in mice. Piezo1-deficient embryos die at midgestation with defects in vascular remodeling, a process critically influenced by blood flow. We demonstrate that Piezo1 is activated by shear stress, the major type of mechanical force experienced by endothelial cells in response to blood flow. Furthermore, loss of Piezo1 in endothelial cells leads to deficits in stress fiber and cellular orientation in response to shear stress, linking Piezo1 mechanotransduction to regulation of cell morphology. These findings highlight an essential role of mammalian Piezo1 in vascular development during embryonic development.
Evolution of tip shape during field evaporation of complex multilayer structures

Atom‐probe tomography analysis of complex multilayer structures is a promising avenue for studying interfacial properties. However, significant artefacts in the three‐dimensional reconstructed data arise due to the field evaporation process. To clarify the origin and impact of these artefacts for a FeCoB/FeCo/MgO/FeCo/IrMn multilayer, tip shapes were observed by transmission electron microscopy and compared to those obtained by finite difference modelling of electric fields and evaporation processes. It was found that the emitter shape is not spherical and its surface morphology evolves during successive evaporation of the different layers. This evolving morphology contributes to the artefacts generally observed in the reconstructed atom‐probe data for multilayer structures because algorithms for three‐dimensional reconstruction are based on the assumption that the shape of the emitter during field evaporation is spherical. Some proposed improvements to data reconstruction are proposed.
Video Surveillance System for Object Detection and Tracking Methods

This paper presents a survey of different techniques related to video surveillance system improving the security. The goal of this paper is to review of various moving object detection and object tracking methods. This paper focuses on detection of moving objects in video surveillance system then tracking the detected objects in the scene. Moving Object detection is first low level important task for any video surveillance application. Detection of moving object is a challenging task. Tracking is required in higher level applications that require the location and shape of object in every frame. This survey describes Background subtraction with alpha, statistical method, Eigen background Subtraction and Temporal frame differencing to detect moving object. It also describes tracking method based on point tracking, kernel tracking and silhouette tracking.
Metalloporphyrins as Therapeutic Catalytic Oxidoreductants in Central Nervous System Disorders

Significance: Metalloporphyrins, characterized by a redox-active transitional metal (Mn or Fe) coordinated to a cyclic porphyrin core ligand, mitigate oxidative/nitrosative stress in biological systems. Side-chain substitutions tune redox properties of metalloporphyrins to act as potent superoxide dismutase mimics, peroxynitrite decomposition catalysts, and redox regulators of transcription factor function. With oxidative/nitrosative stress central to pathogenesis of CNS injury, metalloporphyrins offer unique pharmacologic activity to improve the course of disease. Recent Advances: Metalloporphyrins are efficacious in models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, neuropathic pain, opioid tolerance, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, and stroke and have proved to be useful tools in defining roles of superoxide, nitric oxide, and peroxynitrite in disease progression. The most substantive recent advance has been the synthesis of lipophilic metalloporphyrins offering improved blood–brain barrier penetration to allow intravenous, subcutaneous, or oral treatment. Critical Issues: Insufficient preclinical data have accumulated to enable clinical development of metalloporphyrins for any single indication. An improved definition of mechanisms of action will facilitate preclinical modeling to define and validate optimal dosing strategies to enable appropriate clinical trial design. Due to previous failures of ‘‘antioxidants’’ in clinical trials, with most having markedly less biologic activity and bioavailability than current-generation metalloporphyrins, a stigma against antioxidants has discouraged the development of metalloporphyrins as CNS therapeutics, despite the consistent definition of efficacy in a wide array of CNS disorders. Future Directions: Further definition of the metalloporphyrin mechanism of action, side-by-side comparison with ‘‘failed’’ antioxidants, and intense effort to optimize therapeutic dosing strategies are required to inform and encourage clinical trial design. Antioxid. Redox Signal. 00, 000–000.