Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Verification of Bit-Error Rate in Bang-Bang Clock and Data Recovery Circuits

Version 1c, 4 May 2010 High speed serial data links are expected to transmit data at very high rates with very high fidelity. Today speeds approaching 10 Gb/s are becoming common with 40 Gb/s on the horizon. Typically, a maximum bit-error rate (BER) of 10–12-10–15 is required. Verifying such a small BER with direct simulation is quite impractical. Instead, a procedure is presented that separates the deterministic and random components of the jitter, the primary cause of errors, and verifies them individually. By separating these two components, the BER can be verified in a time that is independent of the value that must be achieved. In this way it is practical to verify the extremely small BERs required of today’s designs. This methodology, though generic in nature, will be demonstrated by applying it to the key component in a high-speed link, the clock and data recovery circuit (CDR). And in particular, it will be applied to a type of CDR that is especially difficult to characterize, a bang-bang clock and data recovery circuit (BB-CDR).
Is auditory discrimination mature by middle childhood? A study using time-frequency analysis of mismatch responses from 7 years to adulthood

Behavioural and electrophysiological studies give differing impressions of when auditory discrimination is mature. Ability to discriminate frequency and speech contrasts reaches adult levels only around 12 years of age, yet an electrophysiological index of auditory discrimination, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reported to be as large in children as in adults. Auditory ERPs were measured in 30 children (7 to 12 years), 23 teenagers (13 to 16 years) and 32 adults (35 to 56 years) in an oddball paradigm with tone or syllable stimuli. For each stimulus type, a standard stimulus (1000 Hz tone or syllable [ba]) occurred on 70% of trials, and one of two deviants (1030 or 1200 Hz tone, or syllables [da] or [bi]) equiprobably on the remaining trials. For the traditional MMN interval of 100–250 ms post-onset, size of mismatch responses increased with age, whereas the opposite trend was seen for an interval from 300 to 550 ms post-onset, corresponding to the late discriminative negativity (LDN). Time-frequency analysis of single trials revealed that the MMN resulted from phase-synchronization of oscillations in the theta (4–7 Hz) range, with greater synchronization in adults than children. Furthermore, the amount of synchronization was significantly correlated with frequency discrimination threshold. These results show that neurophysiological processes underlying auditory discrimination continue to develop through childhood and adolescence. Previous reports of adult-like MMN amplitudes in children may be artefactual results of using peak measurements when comparing groups that differ in variance.
A Low-Cost Method for Multiple Disease Prediction

Recently, in response to the rising costs of healthcare services, employers that are financially responsible for the healthcare costs of their workforce have been investing in health improvement programs for their employees. A main objective of these so called "wellness programs" is to reduce the incidence of chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, with the goal of reducing future medical costs. The majority of these wellness programs include an annual screening to detect individuals with the highest risk of developing chronic disease. Once these individuals are identified, the company can invest in interventions to reduce the risk of those individuals. However, capturing many biomarkers per employee creates a costly screening procedure. We propose a statistical data-driven method to address this challenge by minimizing the number of biomarkers in the screening procedure while maximizing the predictive power over a broad spectrum of diseases. Our solution uses multi-task learning and group dimensionality reduction from machine learning and statistics. We provide empirical validation of the proposed solution using data from two different electronic medical records systems, with comparisons to a statistical benchmark.
MODELING OF WORD CO-OCCURRENCE INFORMATION FOR SPOKEN DOCUMENT RETRIEVAL

In this paper, we present a word topic model (WTM) approach, discovering the co-occurrence relationship between words as well as the long-span latent topic information, for spoken document retrieval (SDR). A given document as a whole is modeled as a composite WTM model for generating an observed query. The underlying characteristics and different kinds of model structures are extensively investigated, while the performance of WTM is thoroughly analyzed and verified by comparison with a few existing retrieval models on the TDT-2 SDR task. We also attempt to incorporate part-of-speech (POS) weighting into the representations of the query observations and the WTM models for obtaining better retrieval performance. Index Terms —language model, spoken document retrieval, word topic model, probabilistic latent semantic analysis
Differences in Carcass and Meat Quality between Organically Reared Cocks and Capons

Summary Th e aim of the present study was to compare carcass and meat quality traits of ecologically reared capons and cocks. Th e experiment comprised 60 layer-type Slovenian hybrid Prelux-G chickens. Half of the animals were caponized at the age of 52 days (app. 0.5 kg body mass) and another half were left entire males. All chickens were reared on the same farm respecting requirements for ecological farming. Chickens were fed commercial feed mixtures combined with the free access to pasture. Aft er the slaughter (185 days), the chickens were dissected and main carcass parts were weighed. Meat quality (pH, colour, water-holding capacity) and chemical composition (protein, water, intramuscular fat) were determined. Birds of both groups had similar weight of carcass and body parts, except for weight of the thighs with drumsticks and off al weight, which were signifi cantly lower in capons. Th e main diff erences in carcass traits appeared in the abdominal fat tissue. Capons had more abdominal fat. Meat physico-chemical characteristics (pH, drip loss) were similar in both groups, except for the colour. Capons had lighter (higher Minolta L*value) and less red (lower Minolta a* value) colour of meat as cocks. Th ere was no diff erence between capons and cocks in the content of muscle proteins, water and intramuscular fat.
Sensorless position control for SPMSM at zero speed and acceleration

This paper proposes a position observation technique for either a salient or non-salient Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM). Combining high-frequency signal injection with an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), the observer provides highly accurate position estimation over a wide speed range and even at standstill under heavy load conditions. Experimental results are provided to confirm the performance and efficiency of the proposed solution.
Basis-Function Modeling of Loudness Variations in Ensemble Performance

This paper describes a computational model of loudness variations in expressive ensemble performance. The model predicts and explains the continuous variation of loudness as a function of information extracted automatically from the written score. Although such models have been proposed for expressive performance in solo instruments, this is (to the best of our knowledge) the first attempt to define a model for expressive performance in ensembles. To that end, we extend an existing model that was designed to model expressive piano performances, and describe the additional steps necessary for the model to deal with scores of arbitrary instrumentation, including orchestral scores. We test both linear and non-linear variants of the extended model n a data set of audio recordings of symphonic music, in a leave-one-out setting. The experiments reveal that the most successful model variant is a recurrent, non-linear model. Even if the accuracy of the predicted loudness varies from one recording to another, in several cases the model explains well over 50% of the variance in loudness.
Human Informed MT Development Post Editing Error Analysis Linguistic Analysis ( S ) MT Development Cycle ( S ) MT Development Cycle Engine Data Selection Preprocessing Features Parameters against BLEU

Since the advent of modern statistical machine translation (SMT), much progress in system performance has been achieved that went hand-in-hand with ever more sophisticated mathematical models and methods. Numerous small improvements have been reported whose lasting effects are hard to judge, especially when they are combined with other newly proposed modifications of the basic models. Often the measured enhancements are hardly visible with the naked eye and two performance advances of the same measured magnitude are difficult to compare in their qualitative effects. We sense a strong need for a paradigm in MT research and development (R&D), that pays more attention to the subject matter, i.e., translation, and that analytically concentrates on the many different challenges for quality translation. The approach we propose utilizes the knowledge and experience of professional translators throughout the entire R&D cycle. It focuses on empirically confirmed quality barriers with the help of standardised error metrics that are supported by a system of interoperable methods and tools and are shared by research and translation business.
Zero-knowledge from secure multiparty computation

We present a general construction of a zero-knowledge proof for an NP relation R(x,w) which only makes a black-box use of a secure protocol for a related multi-partyfunctionality f. The latter protocol is only required to be secure against a small number of "honest but curious" players. As an application, we can translate previous results on the efficiency of secure multiparty computation to the domain of zero-knowledge, improving over previous constructions of efficient zero-knowledge proofs. In particular, if verifying R on a witness of length m can be done by a circuit C of size s, and assuming one-way functions exist, we get the following types of zero-knowledge proof protocols. Approaching the witness length. If C has constant depth over ∧,∨,⊕, - gates of unbounded fan-in, we get a zero-knowledge protocol with communication complexity m·poly(k)·polylog(s), where k is a security parameter. Such a protocol can be implemented in either the standard interactive model or, following a trusted setup, in a non-interactive model. "Constant-rate" zero-knowledge. For an arbitrary circuit C of size s and a bounded fan-in, we geta zero-knowledge protocol with communication complexity O(s)+poly(k). Thus, for large circuits, the ratio between the communication complexity and the circuit size approaches a constant. This improves over the O(ks) complexity of the best previous protocols.
Kinematic Analysis and Computation of ZMP for a 12-internal-dof Biped Robot

In this paper we present the kinematic anal- ysis of a 12-internal-DOF (three-dimensional and anthro- pomorphic) biped robot, the Scout Lynxmotion c , towards a ZMP-based control. Since there are only few contribu- tions that contain explicit models of similar robots, but not exactly this one, our first goal was to generate a kinematic- dynamic model that will let us study and control the loco- motion of the biped. As the space is limited, this paper is restricted to the presentation of the representative steps of the kinematic modeling and the computation of the ZMP, which are then evaluated by numerical simulations. The dynamic model, which has been already obtained, will be published later on.
Age-Related DNA Methylation Changes in Normal Human Prostate Tissues

Purpose: Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer death among the aging male population but the mechanism underlying this association is unclear. Aberrant methylation of promoter CpG islands is associated with silencing of genes and age-dependent methylation of several genes has been proposed as a risk factor for sporadic cancer. We examined the extent of gene methylation in pathologically normal human prostate as a function of age. Experimental Design: We used pyrosequencing to quantitatively analyze the methylation status of nine CpG islands in normal prostate tissue DNA from 45 organ donors and 45 patients who had undergone cystoprostatectomy for bladder cancer. We also analyzed 12 pairs of matched benign and prostate cancer tissue DNA from patients with prostate cancer. Results: Linear regression analysis revealed a significant increase in promoter methylation levels correlating with age for CpG islands at RARβ2 (r = 0.4; P < 0.0001), RASSF1A (r = 0.27; P = 0.01), GSTP1 (r = 0.59; P < 0.0001), NKX2-5 (r = 0.27; P = 0.008), and ESR1 (r = 0.244; P = 0.023) in the normal prostate tissue samples studied. A calculated average methylation (z score) at all nine CpG loci analyzed in the normal prostate tissues showed a strong correlation with age (r = 0.6; P < 0.001). Comparison of the methylation level for the matched benign and prostate cancer tissues from individual patients with prostate cancer showed significantly higher methylation in the prostate cancer tissue samples for RARβ2 (P < 0.001), RASSF1A (P = 0.005), GSTP1 (P < 0.001), NKX2-5 (P = 0.003), ESR1 (P = 0.016), and CLSTN1 (P = 0.01). Conclusions: Our findings show aberrant hypermethylation as a function of age in the normal prostate tissues. Such age-related methylation may precede and predispose to full-blown malignancy.
Expressive Querying over Fuzzy DL-Lite Ontologies

Fuzzy Description Logics (f-DLs) have been proposed as formalisms capable of capturing and reasoning about imprecise and vague knowledge. The last years, research in Description Logics, and also in fDLs, is largely focused on the development of languages where complexity of query answering is as efficient as query answering in data bases. One such example is the DL-Lite language and its fuzzy extension f-DL-Lite. In the current paper we present various a variety of query languages by which we can query a fuzzy DL-Lite knowledge base. Then, we present a prototype implementation for querying f-DL-Lite ontologies.
Biomechanics of shear-sensitive adhesion in climbing animals: peeling, pre-tension and sliding-induced changes in interface strength

Rapid control of adhesive forces is one of the key benchmarks where footpads of climbing animals outperform conventional adhesives, promising novel bio-inspired attachment systems. All climbing animals use shear forces to switch rapidly between firm attachment and easy detachment, but the detailed mechanisms underlying ‘shear-sensitive adhesion’ have remained unclear. Here, we show that attachment forces of stick insects follow classic peeling theory when shear forces are small, but strongly exceed predictions as soon as their pads start to slide due to high shear forces. Pad sliding dramatically increases the critical peel force via a combination of two distinct mechanisms. First, partial sliding will pre-stretch the pads, so that they are effectively stiffer upon detachment and peel increasingly like inextensible tape. We demonstrate how this effect can be directly related to peeling theories which account for frictional dissipation. Second, pad sliding reduces the thickness of the secretion layer in the contact zone, thereby decreasing the interfacial mobility, and increasing the stress levels required for peeling. The approximately linear increase of adhesion with friction results in a sharp increase of adhesion at peel angles less than ca. 30°, allowing rapid switching between attachment and detachment during locomotion. Our results may apply to diverse climbing animals independent of pad morphology and adhesive mechanism, and highlight that control of adhesion is not solely achieved by direction-dependence and morphological anisotropy, suggesting promising new routes for the development of bio-inspired adhesives.
Augmentation des gains des immigrants : biais de selection ou progres reel?

Le present document porte sur l'effet de l'attrition selective sur les estimations de l'augmentation des gains des immigrants, a partir de donnees transversales repetees au Canada. On utilise des donnees fiscales longitudinales couplees aux fiches relatives au droit d'etablissement des immigrants afin d'estimer la variation des gains des immigrants et l'ecart entre les gains des immigrants et ceux des personnes nees au Canada. Les resultats sont compares a ceux decoulant de donnees transversales repetees. Cette approche elimine les differences entre les resultats, qui pourraient decouler des differents modes de collecte et procedures s'appliquant aux divers ensembles de donnees.
Analysis of the trade-off between input current quality and efficiency of high switching frequency PWM rectifiers

Due to their basic physical properties, power MOSFETs exhibit an output capacitance Coss that is dependent on the drain-source voltage. This (nonlinear) parasitic capacitance has to be charged at turn-off of the MOSFET by the drain-source current in rectifier applications which yields input current distortions. As a detailed analysis shows, the nonlinear behavior of this capacitance is even more pronounced for modern super junction MOSFET devices. Whereas Coss increases with increasing chip area the on-state resistance of the MOSFET decreases accordingly. Hence, a trade-off between efficiency and input current distortions exists. A detailed analysis of this effect considering different semiconductor technologies is given in this work and a Pareto curve in the η-THD space is drawn which clearly highlights this relationship. It is further shown, that the distortions mentioned can be reduced considerably by application of a proper feed-forward control signal counteracting the nonlinear switching delay due to Coss. The theoretical considerations are verified by experimental results taken from 10 kW laboratory prototypes with the switching frequencies of 250 kHz, and 1MHz.
Development of a Sensor Node for Precision Horticulture

This paper presents the design of a new wireless sensor node (GAIA Soil-Mote) for precision horticulture applications which permits the use of precision agricultural instruments based on the SDI-12 standard. Wireless communication is achieved with a transceiver compliant with the IEEE 802.15. 4 standard. The GAIA Soil-Mote software implementation is based on TinyOS. A two-phase methodology was devised to validate the design of this sensor node. The first phase consisted of laboratory validation of the proposed hardware and software solution, including a study on power consumption and autonomy. The second phase consisted of implementing a monitoring application in a real broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var Marathon) crop in Campo de Cartagena in south-east Spain. In this way the sensor node was validated in real operating conditions. This type of application was chosen because there is a large potential market for it in the farming sector, especially for the development of precision agriculture applications.
BLIND SOURCE SEPARATION OF MONAURAL MUSICAL SIGNALS USING COMPLEX WAVELETS

In this paper, a new method of blind source separation of monaural signals is presented. It is based on similarity criteria between envelopes and frequency trajectories of the components of the signal, and on its onset and offset times. The main difference with previous works is that in this paper, the input signal has been filtered using a flexible complex band pass filter bank that is a discrete version of the Complex Continuous Wavelet Transform (CCWT). Our main purpose is to show that the CCWT can be a powerful tool in blind separation, due to its strong coherence in both time and frequency domains. The presented separation algorithm is a first approximation to this important task. An example set of four synthetically mixed monaural signals have been analyzed by this method. The obtained results are promising.
Heartbeat tracking application for mobile devices - Arrhythmia Recognition Module

We want to introduce a lightweight system for arrhythmia recognition. The system is intended for outdoor use and is supposed to be implemented in mobile devices, primarily smart phones and smartwatches. We are only concerned about extracting pulses from an ECG stream and passing them to an Arrhythmia Recognition Module - ARM. These two basic tasks should be completed fast and effectively and give an alert when arrhythmia occurs. The ARM we designed relies on simple algorithm for feature extraction and gives an error of 2.007% with false/positives over false/negatives ratio of 19.
Verifying File System Consistency at Runtime

Existing file-system reliability methods, such as checksums, redundancy, or transactional updates, provide limited defenses against file-system bugs that cause disk corruption. The existing workarounds, based on using backups or repairing the file system, are painfully slow. Worse, the recovery is performed much after the error occurred, and thus may result in further corruption and data loss. We present a system that protects file system metadata from buggy file system operations. Our approach leverages modern file systems that provide crash consistency using transactional updates. We define declarative statements called "consistency invariants" for a file system. These invariants must be satisfied by each transaction being committed to disk to preserve file system integrity. By checking each transaction before it commits, we can minimize the damage caused by buggy file systems. The major challenges to this approach are specifying invariants, and correctly interpreting file system behaviour without relying on the file system code. Our prototype system, called Recon, provides a framework for file-system specific metadata interpretation and invariant checking. We show the feasibility of interpreting metadata and writing consistency invariants for the Linux ext3 and btrfs file systems in this framework. For ext3, Recon can detect random as well as targeted file-system corruption at runtime as effectively as the offline e2fsck filesystem checker, with low performance overhead.
Comparison of Glucose and Lipid Metabolic Gene Expressions between Fat and Lean Lines of Rainbow Trout after a Glucose Load

Two experimental rainbow trout lines developed through divergent selection for low (Lean ‘L’ line) or high (Fat ‘F’ line) muscle fat content were used as models to study the genetic determinism of fat depots. Previous nutritional studies suggested that the F line had a better capability to use glucose than the L line during feeding trials. Based on that, we put forward the hypothesis that F line has a greater metabolic ability to clear a glucose load effectively, compared to L line. In order to test this hypothesis, 250 mg/kg glucose was intraperitoneally injected to the two rainbow trout lines fasted for 48 h. Hyperglycemia was observed after glucose treatment in both lines without affecting the phosphorylation of AMPK (cellular energy sensor) and Akt-TOR (insulin signaling) components. Liver glucokinase and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase expression levels were increased by glucose, whereas mRNA levels of β-oxidation enzymes (CPT1a, CPT1b, HOAD and ACO) were down-regulated in the white skeletal muscle of both lines. Regarding the genotype effect, concordant with normoglycemia at 12 h after glucose treatment, higher muscle glycogen was found in F line compared to L line which exhibited hyperglycemia. Moreover, mRNA levels of hepatic glycolytic enzymes (GK, 6PFK and PK), gluconeogenic enzyme PEPCK and muscle fatty acid oxidation enzymes (CPT1a, CPT1b and HOAD) were concurrently higher in the F line. Overall, these findings suggest that F line may have a better ability to maintain glucose homeostasis than L line.