Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An estrogen-dependent glycoprotein is synthesized and released from the oviduct in a temporal- and region-specific manner during early pregnancy in the ewe.

Administration of estradiol-17 beta (E) to ovariectomized (ovx) sheep results in the synthesis and release of an M(r) 90,000-92,000 glycoprotein into the oviductal lumen and into culture medium of ampullar explants (Biol Reprod 1992; 47:889-902). The objective of this study was to determine when and from what region of the oviduct the M(r) 90,000-92,000 glycoprotein is synthesized and released during early pregnancy. Estrous ewes were bred to intact rams of known fertility, and oviducts were obtained at estrus (Day 0) and at Days 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 16 of pregnancy. Pregnancy was verified by the presence of a fertilized egg or developing conceptus and a functional corpus luteum. Oviductal secretions were collected by flushing oviducts with saline and by explant culture. The oviductal fimbria, ampulla, and isthmus were individually cultured (24 h) in the presence of 3H-leucine (3H-leu) or 3H-glucosamine (3H-glcN). The presence of the M(r) 90,000-92,000 glycoprotein in oviductal flushings and culture medium was determined by fluorography and Western blotting. The M(r) 90,000-92,000 protein was present in SDS gels and blots of oviductal flushings from animals through Days 4-6 of pregnancy, but not in flushings from Day 16 pregnant animals or from ovx, untreated animals. This protein was present in 3H-leu- and 3H-glcN-labeled culture medium of the oviductal ampulla (Days 0, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 16) and fimbria (Days 0, 1.5, 2, 3, and 4) during early pregnancy. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Avoiding double marginalisation in agro-food chains

This paper proposes a model for vertical relationships in several agribusiness sectors for which differences in terms of quality exist in the end-market. Intermediaries justify their position on the grounds of their exclusive access to a market segment (high quality), whereas producers retain the right to supply the low-quality market directly. Our model takes into account the diversity of consumers' tastes, and a possible extra marketing cost for direct access to the market by the producer. We demonstrate that when the producer can commit in advance to supplying the available capacity in full, then in certain conditions the efficiency of a vertically integrated sector can be restored (level of production and allocation to qualitative segments). Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.
Towards Duration Invariance of i-Vector-based Adaptive Score Normalization

It is generally conceded that duration variability has huge effects on the biometric performance of speaker recognition systems. State-of-the-art approaches, which employ i-vector representations, apply adaptive symmetric (AS) score-normalizations to improve the performance of the underlying system by using speciﬁc statistics on reference and probe templates obtained from additional datasets. The incorporation of duration information turns out to be vital in order to prevent a signiﬁcant raise of entropy, since variation and likely a reduction of the signal duration from reference to probe samples is unpredictable.Inthispaper we propose a duration-invariant extension of the AS-Norm, which is capable of computing more robust scores over a wide range of duration variabilities. The presented technique requires less computational effort at the time of speaker veriﬁcation, and yields a 19% relative-gain in the minimum detection costs on the current NIST i-vector challenge database, compared to the provided NIST i-vector baseline system.
Research on the Multi-factor Integrated Model of Enterprise Technique Innovation Based on Knowledge Alliance

Enterprise technique innovation based on knowledge alliance is establishing and coordinating a dynamic, multi-functional, multi-sectional and multi-regional cooperative process by interiorizing exterior technical resources. It is also a complicated social economic process, which necessarily involves many elements such as enterprises' cultures, techniques, environments, information flow, social service and regional cooperation. This paper analyzes multi-factors of enterprise technique innovation (ETI) based on knowledge alliance and constructs the "airplane" model of multi-factor integration. It also points out the methods and steps of vaguely comprehensive evaluation of enterprise technique innovative abilities.
Robust mobile robot localization using optical flow sensors and encoders

Open-loop estimation methods are commonly used in mobile robot applications. Their strength lies in the speed and simplicity of an estimate. However, these methods can sometimes lead to inaccurate or unreliable positional estimates. Using one or more optical flow sensors, a method has been developed which can accurately track position in both ideal kinematic conditions and otherwise. Using optical flow techniques and available sensors, reliable positional estimates are made. The sensor provides accurate measurement of the movement at the sensor location. Even though the sensor does not provide angular displacement, the robot movement is estimated using only one sensor even with wheel slip. However, when the robot moves sideways due to external disturbance, redundant sensors are used in order to estimate the configuration of the robot. Pseudo inverse based estimation and the extended Kalman filter based estimation are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Location of the sensors has also been investigated in order to minimize errors caused by inaccurate sensor readings. Finally, the method is implemented and tested using a potential field based navigation scheme.
Isscc 2007 / Session 30 / Building Blocks for High-speed Transceivers / 30.3 30.3 Performance Variability of a 90ghz Static Cml Frequency Divider in 65nm Soi Cmos

A frequency divider is an essential and critical building block in high-performance clock synthesizers. Since the frequency divider operates at the highest frequency in the system in order to pre-scale the high-frequency VCO output, the divider speed and power trade-off should be carefully considered at an early design stage. In particular, above 50GHz, the input power reaching the frequency divider is significantly reduced by the parasitic interconnect capac-itance and resistance. For limited input power, the operating range of the frequency divider is thus narrowed but must still cover the tuning range of the VCO for proper operation of the clock synthesizer. In addition to nominal speed, power and operating-range requirements, variability in the frequency divider is a critical issue for the manufacturing yield of high-speed clock synthesizers. Recently, 21.5% (3σ) variation in the maximum operating frequency of dividers over a wafer in 90nm SOI technology has been reported [1]. In this paper, a static CML frequency divider is implemented in 65nm SOI CMOS technology to achieve 100GHz maximum operating frequency with 52.4mW power dissipation. Across-wafer and wafer-to-wafer variations of the divider self-oscillation frequency are measured at 80 different bias conditions using 2409 divider samples (3 divider types on each of 73 dies, for 11 wafers). The variation of critical circuit parameters for divider performance including threshold voltage, parasitic capacitance and resistance is estimated using the measurement data and sensitivity analysis at different bias conditions. Figure 30.3. 1 shows the schematic of a 2:1 static frequency divider. The divider uses CML master and slave latches with inductive peaking for bandwidth enhancement. The operating range of the frequency divider is designed to be centred at 80GHz. The bottom transistors (Q1-Q4) are sized to 10µm to drive up to 10mA current. The size of the latch transistors (Q9-Q12) is adjusted to 8µm to reduce capacitive loading at output nodes while satisfying the self-oscillation condition g mL RL>1 [3] with poly-silicon resistor loads. Four 300pH high-Q stab inductors are introduced to increase the bandwidth by cancelling parasitic capacitance. Figure 30.3. 2 shows the sensitivity curves of the frequency divider at 4 different bias conditions, indicating the input power required to achieve 2:1 frequency division at a given input frequency. Based on the frequency-range limitation of the equipment used in this measurement, the divider is biased to work over the input frequency range from 75 to 110GHz. The divider biased at 2.2V V DD and 1.5V V …
An easy to implement and energy-saving anti-collision algorithm for RFID systems

This paper proposes a new Frame Slotted Aloha protocol for RFID Systems. The proposed algorithm utilizes a method to adjust the initial frame size to a value close to the number of tags, then starts the procedure to identify the tags. When a collision occurs, the algorithm resolve it immediately. Simulation results indicate that in relation to the EpcGlobal Class 1 Gen 2 - C1G2 standard, the proposed algorithm can reduce the energy consumption and identification time in 24% and the total number of slots in 17%. Moreover we show that the algorithm is simple enough to be easily implemented.
Image compression based on Wavelet Support Vector Machine Kernels

In this recent multimedia world, the major challenges are the optimized use of storage space and Bandwidth. Compression plays the crucial role to reduce the storage space of images and transmission of information with limited Bandwidth availability without degrading the quality of image. Inorder to fulfil the above demand, in literature various compression algorithms were proposed for different applications. In this paper, we evaluated the performance of Wavelet Support vector machines (WSVM) with different combinations of kernel function and wavelets.SVM regression is applied to wavelet coefficients inorder to approximate the obtained coefficients from wavelets so that better compression can be achieved by removing the additional redundancy. From training data and realized compression, Support Vector Machine Regression (SVMR) has the possibility to learn about the dependency by the use of support vectors inorder to represent the real data and to eradicate redundancy. Run-length coding is used to encode the support vectors and its corresponding weights, obtained from the SVM regression. Performance evaluation of WSVM is done in terms of compression Ratio, MSE and PSNR Experimental results shows that the compression performance can be improved with rbio4.4 combined with RBF kernel gives high compression ratio without loss in the image quality
Truth Table Minimization of Computational Models

Complexity theory offers a variety of concise computational models for computing boolean functions - branching programs, circuits, decision trees and ordered binary decision diagrams to name a few. A natural question that arises in this context with respect to any such model is this: Given a function f:{0,1}^n \to {0,1}, can we compute the optimal complexity of computing f in the computational model in question? (according to some desirable measure). A critical issue regarding this question is how exactly is f given, since a more elaborate description of f allows the algorithm to use more computational resources. Among the possible representations are black-box access to f (such as in computational learning theory), a representation of f in the desired computational model or a representation of f in some other model. One might conjecture that if f is given as its complete truth table (i.e., a list of f's values on each of its 2^n possible inputs), the most elaborate description conceivable, then any computational model can be efficiently computed, since the algorithm computing it can run poly(2^n) time. Several recent studies show that this is far from the truth - some models have efficient and simple algorithms that yield the desired result, others are believed to be hard, and for some models this problem remains open. In this thesis we will discuss the computational complexity of this question regarding several common types of computational models. We shall present several new hardness results and efficient algorithms, as well as new proofs and extensions for known theorems, for variants of decision trees, formulas and branching programs.
PLIERS AT VLC 2

This paper describes experiments done on the VLC2 collection at TREC-7. Methods used for indexing text is described together with the results: this includes the official collections BASE1, plus some larger unofficial collections named BASE2 and BASE4. Search times on these collections are described and discussed with a particular emphasis on scaleup: for both weighted term search and passage retrieval. The various configurations for experiments are described.
Negotiating Trade Liberalization at the WTO: Domestic Politics and Bargaining Dynamics

Introduction PART I: SETTING THE STAGE Framework for Analysis of Negotiations Multilateral Agriculture Trade Regime PART II: DOMESTIC INSTITUTIONS US Trade Politics EU Trade Politics Brazilian Trade Politics Australian Trade Politics PART III: NEGOTIATING TRADE LIBERALIZATION Seattle Ministerial Conference 1999 Doha Ministerial Conference 2001 Cancun Ministerial Conference 2003 Hong Kong Ministerial Conference 2005 Geneva Informal Meeting 2006 Conclusion
Normalized Differential Conductance Spectroscopy to study the tunneling properties of post soft breakdown SiO2

Normalized Differential Conductance Spectroscopy (NDCS) has been used to investigate the tunneling properties of post soft breakdown SiO2. It is shown that the NDCS is capable of separating various components of tunneling current and determining its corresponding tunnel constants of post SBD SiO2. Therefore, the most important tunneling parameters: the effective mass of tunneling electron in SBD SiO2, and the effective potential barrier height at the Si/SiO2 interface can be determined independently from the NDCS.
The Anti-Antidiscrimination Agenda

People are pretty sure there is something going on in constitutional law these days, but they don't know what it is. Since about 1995, the Supreme Court has issued groundbreaking decisions on so many subjects-for example, the commerce power, affirmative action, the Eleventh Amendment, Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and expressive association-that observers are beginning to step back from the various doctrinal debates to see if a bigger picture is emerging. One recent symposium asked whether constitutional law was undergoing a "sea change," as opposed to minor modifications in disparate areas. ' Those who sympathize with the Court's decisions have seen a new "textualism" at work; 2 critics have claimed, on the contrary, that a new "judicial activism," especially in the area of federalism, can be seen below the recent tectonic shifts. ' But the epithet "activism" is just a colorful way of disagreeing, and both the "textualism" and "federalism" tags are manifestly insufficient. Take Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 4 in which the Court held that the Scouts had a constitutional right to expel a scoutmaster because of his homosexuality. The right at issue, the Court held, was the "First
Computing the Equilibrium Configuration of Epitaxially Strained Crystalline Films

We study a model for shape instabilities of heteroepitaxial crystalline films. Lattice misfits between the substrate and the film induce elastic stresses in the film, which adjusts the shape of its free surface to reduce its total energy, sum of an elastic and a surface energy. We give a precise framework that guarantees the existence of solutions to this variational problem. We show that equilibrium states can be approximated using a two-phase model for representing the surface energy. Numerical results, obtained via this approximation, are presented.
Examining registration delays in mobile based social networks

The popularity of web based social networks is rapidly increasing nowadays. These solutions allow managing relationships online. There are also several mobile solutions to these networks but they are mainly limited to reaching the services of the social network from the mobile device. The fact, that the phonebook of the mobile phones also represents social relationships, can be used for detecting additional relationships in the social network automatically, which has several benefits. For this a similarity detecting algorithm is required, which runs in the background on demand, on the server. When a member registers and synchronizes her or his entire phonebook the system should detect similarities as fast as possible. In this paper we introduce our mobile based social network. We discuss about similarity detecting based on phonebook sizes and we show a queuing theory based model regarding to registration delays.
Adoption of Renewable Portfolio Standards in the United States: Which Factors Matter?

The Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) has become the most important instrument in United States to encourage the generation of electricity through the use of renewable energy. In brief, the RPS is a policy mechanism that requires suppliers of electricity to provide a specific percentage of their energy supply from some form of renewable energy. Such a percentage is referred to as the RPS ultimate target. In this thesis factors affecting the adoption of an RPS by U.S. states are investigated. Through statistical regression, this thesis specifically studies the effects of political views, energy endowments, electricity markets, economic factors, and other variables. These factors are related to pollution levels and geographical location in the adoption of an RPS and its ultimate target. Raw data from several federal agencies, national vii laboratories, and the U.S Census Bureau were collected and used in the analysis. Independent variables are related to energy generation, geographical location in the electricity generation grid, political tendency, economic indicators, electricity market, and pollution. The dependent variable represents the adoption or not of the RPS and its ultimate target. Since only a fraction of the states have adopted an RPS policy and defined a target, data associated with the RPS exhibits what is termed as a corner solution response, meaning that data is continuous and non-negative over strictly positive values, but takes the value zero for some non-trivial fraction of the population. Thus, a Tobit model was used for the analysis. Results indicate that the Tobit model yields a valid representation of the data. For comparison, a model based on an ordinary least squares (OLS) has also been estimated and its results are in agreement with those obtained for the Tobit model.
Changes in breeding phenology of eastern Ontario frogs over four decades

Global climate change has been implicated in phenological shifts for a variety of taxa. Amphibian species in particular are sensitive to changes in their environment due to their biphasic life history and restricted reproductive requirements. Previous research has shown that not all temperate amphibian species respond similarly to the same suite of climatic or environmental cues, nor are individual species necessarily uniform in their responses across their range. We examined both the timing of spring emergence and calling phenology of eight anuran species in southeastern Ontario, Canada, using an approximately 40-year dataset of historical records of amphibian activity. Rana pipiens was the only species out of eight considered to emerge significantly earlier, by an estimated 22 days over four decades. Both R. pipiens and Bufo americanus have advanced initiation of calling over a four-decade span significantly earlier by an estimated 37.2 and 19.2 days, respectively. Rana sylvatica showed a trend toward earlier emergence by 19 days, whereas we did not detect changes in emergence phenology for the remaining five species. This significant shift in breeding behavior for two species correlates to significant regional increases in spring temperatures of an estimated 2.7–2.8°C overall over four decades. Our study suggests that local temperature increases have affected the timing of emergence and the onset of calling activity in some Ontario anuran species. Global decline or range shifts ultimately may be related to changes in reproductive behavior and timing mediated by shifting climate.
An optimization algorithm to expand the reduced workspace with fixed-joint method for redundant manipulator

In this paper, an optimization algorithm is proposed to settle the deficiency of fixed-joint method. The fixed-joint method leads to a reduced workspace which has some inaccessible points due to a special joint fixed. Since different fixed joint has different reduced workspace, we develop a method to make these workspaces mutual complementation. Manipulability is used to select the appropriate joint angle to be fixed in order to satisfy the given posture. By comparing 7-dof manipulator's real-time inverse kinematic solutions, we put forward detailed analysis of the workspace of the end-effector with different fixed joint angles. The kinematics simulation is implemented to verify the correctness of this method.
G-quadruplexes and helicases

Guanine-rich DNA strands can fold in vitro into non-canonical DNA structures called G-quadruplexes. These structures may be very stable under physiological conditions. Evidence suggests that G-quadruplex structures may act as ‘knots’ within genomic DNA, and it has been hypothesized that proteins may have evolved to remove these structures. The first indication of how G-quadruplex structures could be unfolded enzymatically came in the late 1990s with reports that some well-known duplex DNA helicases resolved these structures in vitro. Since then, the number of studies reporting G-quadruplex DNA unfolding by helicase enzymes has rapidly increased. The present review aims to present a general overview of the helicase/G-quadruplex field.