Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microscopic oxide defects causing BTI, RTN, and SILC on high-k FinFETs

Reliability issues of MOSFETs such as bias temperature instability (BTI), random telegraph noise (RTN), and stress-induced leakage current (SILC), are linked to the trapping of charges in oxides. Even though the chemical structure of these oxide defects is still the subject of debate, detailed studies of these reliability phenomena have shown that their physical behavior can be successfully described by non-radiative multi-phonon (NMP) theory. In this work we characterize and study a pMOS high-k FinFET technology starting from degradation measurements up to the simulation of the energy barriers in the framework of NMP theory. This allows to investigate the aforementioned reliability issues all based on their common cause, the microscopic oxide defects.
Dispersion and Diffusion

In Shannon's landmark 1949 paper Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, the idea of diffusive functions is briefly mentioned. We consider two common definitions of such functions mapping between binary strings of fixed length. Given the dimension of the input space, we determine the minimum dimension of the output space for which such a function exists, by explicit construction and with respect to each definition. It will follow that each larger output dimension allows for such a function as well.
Fast trajectory replanning using Laplacian mesh optimization

Adjusting to new situations by changing the shape of a prerecorded trajectory is an important aspect for robot manipulation in a constrained environment. For being recognized as a distinctive trajectory, the goal of any trajectory modification is to keep local and global properties as similar as possible compared to the reference trajectory. This paper presents a framework that can alter the shape of a trajectory by defining the position of a set of sampling points while maintaining local properties in a least-squares manner. The method consists of a three-staged approach first modifying the global shape of the trajectory and subsequently taking local features into account. Inspired by mesh processing used for 3D surface editing, differential coordinates based on the discretized Laplacian operator are used for measuring and maintaining local trajectory properties when deforming the trajectory. Last, a post-processing step based on a relaxed “as-rigid-as-possible” principle allows local deformations and length modifications of the trajectory for a better tradeoff between preserving local and global properties. Experiments verifying the applicability of the proposed algorithm are conducted using a 7-DoF anthropomorphic arm following a previously recorded and modified trajectory.
Income inequality, regional disparities and fiscal decentralization in industrialized countries

In this paper we investigate the interactions among fiscal decentralization, income inequality and regional disparities, using a sample of 23 OECD countries over the period 1971-2000. We first explore the effects of fiscal decentralization on overall income inequality. We then test whether regional economic disparities influence the fiscal decentralization process. We use novel and robust measures of fiscal decentralization based on differences in the degree of both expenditure and tax autonomy. We also conduct several robustness checks to tackle the potential endogeneity and reverse causality issues. Our results highlight the importance both of the nature of fiscal decentralization – expenditure versus taxation – and of the extent to which responsibility and decision powers are really left to subcentral governaments. While a higher degree of tax decentralization is associated with higher overall income inequality within a country, high regional disparities seem to be correlated with lower expenditure decentralization.
Periodic Oscillation of Piecewise Linear Three-gene Regulatory Network with Negative Feedback Loops

In synthetic biology, we need not only to design the basic functional modules, but also to understand the parameters of the designed modules. In this area, the existing theoretical result about periodic oscillation is difficult to achieve. We study the Piecewise Linear three-gene regulatory network with negative feedback loop to show how to control the periodic oscillation.
A novel multiple sink nodes placement strategies based on Gene Expression Programming for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network is a new type of network with embedded system, wireless communication, distributing computing and micro sensor technology. In order to understand principles and describe theory of wireless sensor network node, after analyzing components and signal processing course in wireless sensor network node, the signal models of nodes were studied. A real application node of wireless sensor network node based on Gene Expression Programming processor was introduced. The work affords positive significance in theory and application for wireless sensor network node.
Seismic signal production in a wolf spider: parallel versus serial multi-component signals

SUMMARY Animal signals can consist of multiple parts within or across sensory modalities (multi-component signals or multimodal signals). While recent work has focused on multimodal signals, the production, processing and evolution of multi-component signals has received considerably less attention. Here, using synchronous high-speed video and laser vibrometer recordings followed by experimental manipulations of putative sound-producing structures, we explored the mechanisms of seismic signal production in the courtship display of Schizocosa stridulans Stratton. Two types of seismic courtship signals were observed: `rev' and `idle' signals. Revs consist of a high-frequency component produced by flexions of the male pedipalp (stridulation) simultaneous with a low-frequency component produced by movements of the abdomen (tremulation). This multi-component signal is produced by independent structures and represents a parallel multi-component display. By contrast, idle displays consist of a high-intensity component produced by drumming of the forelegs on the substrate (percussion) followed by a high-frequency component produced by flexions of the male pedipalp (stridulation). While the components of the idle display are also produced by independent structures, the leg drumming and palp flexions occur serially and do not overlap in time. We discuss the selective pressures that may drive the evolution of multiple sound-producing structures as well as the selective pressures that drive the evolution of parallel versus serial multi-component signals.
Performance Studies of a MB-OFDM UWB Systems Using Reduced-Complexity Algorithm for LDPC Decoder

In this paper, we study a MB-OFDM UWB system using reduced complexity decoding algorithm for LDPC codes. Focusing on the system simulation and performance analysis, we design a high rate MB-OFDM UWB system and run a complete simulation for such system over the additive white Gaussian noise(AWGN) channel and IEEE UWB channel. Simulation results show that the bit error rate (BER) performance of such UWB system is better, and illustrate that the use of reduced- complexity decoding algorithm for LDPC codes in MB-OFDM UWB system is quite feasible.
Impact of user grouping on joint network/channel coding

In this paper, we will present a joint network/channel decoding algorithm JNCD. This algorithm is used especially on cellular network. In our study, we consider a small network that consists of two transmitters (Mobile Station MS), one relay and one receiver (Base Station BS). We will consider the uplink between MS1, MS2 and BS. The performances of this system will be compared to another system which doesn't use network coding. In our work, we will study the impact of grouping of senders when we use JNCD. Thus, we will consider three cases, firstly, we treat the case when the two MS cross the same transmission channel, secondly, when one user cross a bad transmission channel, and finally, when one user cross a channel that is supposed to be good.
Hereditary pulmonary alveolar proteinosis caused by recessive CSF2RB mutations

To the Editors: Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a syndrome characterised by accumulation of surfactant in alveoli resulting in respiratory insufficiency 1. Surfactant homeostasis is critical for lung function and is tightly regulated, in part, by pulmonary granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), which is required for surfactant clearance by alveolar macrophages 2 and alveolar macrophage maturation 1. The effects of GM-CSF are mediated by cell-surface receptors composed of GM-CSF-binding α-chains and affinity-enhancing β-chains (encoded by CSF2RA and CSF2RB , respectively) 3. Ligand binding activates signalling via multiple pathways including the signal transducer and activator of phosphorylation (STAT)5 4. Disruption of GM-CSF signalling causes PAP by impairing surfactant catabolism in alveolar macrophages 1. In 90% of patients, PAP is caused by neutralising GM-CSF auto-antibodies 5, 6. Through the Rare Lung Diseases Network global PAP detection programme, we identified PAP caused by recessive CSF2RA mutations and developed novel diagnostic methods to identify patients with PAP caused by GM-CSF receptor dysfunction 4, 7. Herein, we report a case of hereditary PAP caused by disruption of GM-CSF receptor β-chain function. A previously healthy 9-yr-old female presented with bilateral pneumonia, followed 3 months later by progressive dyspnoea of insidious onset. The diagnosis of PAP was suggested by chest radiograph findings, high-resolution computed tomography and bronchoalveolar cytology, and was confirmed by surgical lung biopsy. Pulmonary histopathology was typical of primary PAP (fig. 1) and she was successfully treated by serial whole lung lavage therapy. Details of the case history are included in the online supplement. A GM-CSF auto-antibody test was negative and the serum GM-CSF level was increased (25.9 pg·mL−1) suggesting GM-CSF receptor dysfunction as the molecular basis of PAP 4, 7. A molecular evaluation was undertaken and included GM-CSF receptor detection, STAT-5 phosphorylation, CSF2RA …
Use of Corn-Derived Ethanol Coproducts and Synthetic Lysine and Tryptophan for Growth of Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) Fry

Corn gluten meal, corn gluten feed, and corn distillers' grains with solubles, the coproducts from ethanol fermentation of corn, were incorporated in tilapia diets with 32 and 28% protein. The diets were balanced in amino acid composition by addition of soy flour and/or synthetic lysine and tryptophan. The diets were fed to tilapia fry of average initial weight of 0.5 g in aquaria for 8 weeks. Weight gain expressed as percentage increase after 56 days were best (P 0.05) as the control 32% protein diet. Fish fed 28% protein diet with 82% corn distillers' grains with solubles and synthetic lysine and tryptophan and 28% protein diet with 67% corn gluten feed and 26% soy flour also resulted in the same feed conversion ratio and protein efficiency ratio (P > 0.05) as the control diet. Fish fed the remaining two 28% protein diets exhibited higher feed conversion ratio and lower protein efficiency ratio (P < 0.05) than fish fed the control diet. It appears the 28% protein diet with 67% corn gluten feed and 26% soy flour is adequate for tilapia fry based on weight gain, feed conversion ratio, and protein efficiency ratio.
Correlation between Worth Four Dot Test Results and Fusional Control in Intermittent Exotropia

Purpose To compare the results of Worth 4-dot test (WFDT) performed in dark and light, and at different distances, with fusional control in patients with intermittent exotropia (IXT). Methods Dark and light WFDT was performed for new IXT subjects at different distances and the results were compared with level of office-based fusional control. Results Fifty IXT patients including 17 male and 33 female subjects participated in the study. A significant difference (P<0.05) was observed between levels of home and office-based fusional control (P<0.05). A weak correlation was present between the results of WFDT and level of office-based fusional control; the highest agreement (Kappa=0.088) was observed with dark WFDT performed at a distance of 4m. Conclusion Evaluation of fusional state by far WFDT, especially in a dark room, shows modest correlation with office-based fusional control in IXT patients and can be used as an adjunct to more complex tests such as far stereoacuity.
Apprentissage « bottom-up » des phonèmes : une étude computationnelle

Nous presentons une etude computationnelle de l'hypothese selon laquelle l'information distri-butionnelle est suffisante pour acquerir les regles allophoniques (et ainsi les phonemes) de facon bottom-up. L'hypothese a ete testee en utilisant une mesure de la theorie de l'information qui compare les distributions. La phase de test a ete conduite sur plusieurs corpus de langues artificielles et sur deux corpus de langues naturelles (constitues de transcriptions de parole adressee aux enfants) typologiquement distantes : le francais et le japonais. Trois filtres ont ete ajoutes a la mesure. L'un concerne la fiabilite statistique due a la taille de l'echantillon, les deux autres prennent en compte les deux proprietes universelles des regles allophoniques suivantes : les elements d'une regle allophonique doivent etre phonetiquement proches, et les regles allophoniques doivent etre de nature assimilatoire.
Improved topic-dependent language modeling using information retrieval techniques

N-gram language models are frequently used by the speech recognition systems to constrain and guide the search. N-gram models use only the last N-1 words to predict the next word. Typical values of N that are used range from 2-4. N-gram language models thus lack the long-term context information. We show that the predictive power of the N-gram language models can be improved by using long-term context information about the topic of discussion. We use information retrieval techniques to generalize the available context information for topic-dependent language modeling. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique by performing experiments on the Wall Street Journal text corpus, which is a relatively difficult task for topic-dependent language modeling since the text is relatively homogeneous. The proposed method can reduce the perplexity of the baseline language model by 37%, indicating the predictive power of the topic-dependent language model.
A Simulated Annealing approach for solving Minimum Manhattan Network Problem

In this paper we address the Minimum Manhattan Network (MMN) problem. It is an important geometric problem with vast applications. As it is an NP-complete discrete combinatorial optimization problem we employ a simple metaheuristic namely Simulated Annealing. We have also developed benchmark datasets and tested our algorithm with the dataset.
Lightweight functional session types

Session types describe communication protocols, capturing both the type and the order of messages. Recently, we presented a semantics for a core session-typed linear λ-calculus, GV, and proved that it enjoys a number of desirable properties beyond type soundness, including deadlock freedom, determinism (and hence race freedom), and termination. In this paper, we modularly extend GV with practical features. We begin by introducing FST (System F with Session Types), an extension of GV, with features including polymorphism, row typing (to support extensible records, variants, and session types), and a subkinding system (to integrate linear and unlimited types). FST preserves all of GV’s desirable properties. We then consider further extensions of FST with recursion and recursive types, which preserve all of the properties save for termination. Finally, we consider an additional extension of FST with access points (a much more expressive mechanism for initiating communication among threads) in return for giving up deadlock freedom, determinism (and indeed race freedom), and termination. Building on the formal development, we discuss the design of Session Links, a session-typing extension of the Links web programming language and a full implementation of FST.
Dissolved and particulate primary production along a longitudinal gradient in the Mediterranean Sea

Abstract. We have determined the photosynthetic production of dissolved (DOCp) and particulate organic carbon (POCp) along a longitudinal transect in the Mediterranean Sea during the summer stratification period. The euphotic layer-integrated rates of DOCp and POCp ranged between approximately 50–130 and 95–210 mgC m−2 d−1, respectively, and showed an east to west increasing trend. For the whole transect, the relative contribution of DOCp to total, euphotic layer-integrated primary production (percentage of extracellular release, PER) averaged ~37% and did not show any clear longitudinal pattern. In spite of the relatively high PER values, the measured DOCp rates were much lower than the estimated bacterial carbon demand, suggesting a small degree of coupling between phytoplankton exudation and bacterial metabolism. Our results, when compared with previous measurements obtained with the same methods in several ecosystems of contrasting productivity, support the view that the relative importance of DOCp increases under strong nutrient limitation.
Enhanced TCP performance over Mobile IPv6: innovative fragmentation avoidance and adaptive routing techniques

Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (MIPv6) is a proposal for handling the routing of IPv6 packets to mobile nodes in a foreign network. There are two methods for routing of IPv6 packets from the correspondent node (CN) to the mobile node (MN): triangular routing (TR) and route optimisation (RO). With MIPv6 RO, the CN uses the care-of address (CoA) as the destination address to transfer packets to the MN. Hence the MIPv6 module of the CN adds the mobility routing header (MRH) to store the home address of the MN. This increases packet sizes and may result in fragmentation. Fragmentation degrades transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over MIPv6. The paper discusses the cost of fragmentation and innovative fragmentation avoidance techniques. The cost of fragmentation is studied by carrying out experiments in a real IPv6 backbone (6Bone) where it is found that improved performance can be obtained by implementing innovative fragmentation avoidance techniques in the TCP/MIPv6 protocol stack of the Kame software. The efficiency of fragmentation avoidance techniques is also calculated. The paper also illustrates the impact of MIPv6 TR on TCP performance. A performance comparison between TR and RO is discussed. Based on this performance comparison, a generic adoptive routing technique is proposed.
The Parallel Solution of Almost Block Diagonal Systems Arising in Numerical Methods for BVPs for ODEs

Three parallel algorithms are presented for solving the Almost Block Diagonal (ABD) systems of linear algebraic equations that arise during the numerical solution of Boundary Value Problems (BVPs) for Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). Until recently, the solution of these systems has proven to be the execution-time bottleneck in the parallel implementation of most BVP codes. Several numerical examples are given comparing the three algorithms with respect to accuracy and speed.
Privacy-friendly photo capturing and sharing system

The wide adoption of smart devices with onboard cameras facilitates photo capturing and sharing, but greatly increases people's concern on privacy infringement. Here we seek a solution to respect the privacy of persons being photographed in a smarter way that they can be automatically erased from photos captured by smart devices according to their requirements. To make this work, we need to address three challenges: 1) how to enable users explicitly express their privacy protection intentions without wearing any visible specialized tag, and 2) how to associate the intentions with persons in captured photos accurately and efficiently. Furthermore, 3) the association process itself should not cause portrait information leakage and should be accomplished in a privacy-preserving way. In this work, we design, develop, and evaluate a system, called COIN (Cloak Of INvisibility), that enables a user to flexibly express her privacy requirement and empowers the photo service provider (or image taker) to exert the privacy protection policy. Leveraging the visual distinguishability of people in the field-of-view and the dimension-order-independent property of vector similarity measurement, COIN achieves high accuracy and low overhead. We implement a prototype system, and our evaluation results on both the trace-driven and real-life experiments confirm the feasibility and efficiency of our system.
Communities, Random Walks, and Social Sybil Defense

Abstract Sybil attacks, in which an adversary forges a potentially unbounded number of identities, are a danger to distributed systems and online social networks. The goal of sybil defense is to accurately identify sybil identities. This article surveys the evolution of sybil defense protocols that leverage the structural properties of the social graph underlying a distributed system to identify sybil identities. We make two main contributions. First, we clarify the deep connection between sybil defense and the theory of random walks. This leads us to identify a community detection algorithm that, for the first time, offers provable guarantees in the context of sybil defense. Second, we advocate a new goal for sybil defense that addresses the more limited, but practically useful, goal of securely white-listing a local region of the graph.
Icphs Xvii Regular Session

It has been observed that in production, the boundary between the vowels /i/ and /e/ is diagonal, i.e. it involves both F1 and F2; in perception, by contrast, the boundary has been observed to be horizontal, i.e. listeners do not use F2 as a cue for distinguishing the two vowels. The same is true of the /u o/ boundary. With computer simulations of virtual language learners we show that this perception-production discrepancy can be explained if vowels are structured as bundles of phonetically based phonological features.
E 10 Cosmology

We construct simple exact solutions to the E10/K(E10) coset model by exploiting its integrability. Using the known corre- spondences with the bosonic sectors of maximal supergravity the- ories, these exact solutions translate into exact cosmological solu- tions. In this way, we are able to recover some recently discovered solutions of M-theory exhibiting phases of accelerated expansion, or, equivalently, S-brane solutions, and thereby accommodate such solutions within the E10/K(E10) model. We also discuss the diffi- culties regarding solutions with non-vanishing (constant) curvature of the internal manifold.
Visualization of Climate and Climate Change Data : An Overview

Visualization is a key technology for analyzing and presenting climate simulations and observations as well as related social and ecological data. Furthermore, mediating research results to decision makers and to the general public in an easily-understandable way is of growing importance. This paper provides the results of a questionnaire with climate impact researchers using visualization and a overview of the state-of-the-art in climate visualization, incorporating standard visualization techniques, tools and systems as well as alternative approaches from visualization literature. Furthermore, specific aspects such as the simplified usage of complex visualization systems, climate model and data quality and the integration of statistics and visualization will be briefly discussed.