Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Low Power OTA for Biomedical Applications

— New electronics for medical monitoring promise low-cost, maintenance-free, and lightweight devices which are critical in long-term medical measurements and in home-based tele-monitoring services. Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) is a fundamental block of analog signal processing application particularly in Gm-C filter. A modified architecture of linearized subthreshold OTA for low-power, low-voltage, and low-frequency applications which incorporates better linearity and increased output impedance has been proposed in this paper. The OTA uses high output impedance low voltage current mirror to increase its impedance. The achieved open-loop DC gain is 71.49 dB at unity gain bandwidth (UGB) of 98.16 KHz. The OTA runs at power supply of 0.9 volt which makes OTA to consume power is 285.99 nanowatts. The circuit implementation has been done using standard 0.18 micron technology provided by TSMC on BSIM 3v3 level-53 model parameter and verified results through use of ELDO Simulator.
Sentiment Classification and Aggregation

User reviews provide a wealth of information but are often overwhelming in volume. In this work we propose a novel approach to extract positive and negative sentiments from user review data leveraging only the overall review scores that are part of the data itself. We then investigate clustering techniques to identify key positive and negative sentiment aspects to provide a user friendly summary for users.
Opportunity is in the eye of beholder

As the literature on organizational alliances has begun to shift from analyzing individual dyads to strategic alliance portfolios, the essential drivers of firms’ alliance portfolio characteristics remain largely unexplored and poorly understood. In particular, existing studies do not provide a clear understanding of how contextual factors determine essential characteristics of a firm’s strategic alliance portfolio—particularly with respect to the diversity of the portfolio. Treating firms’ alliance portfolios as bundles of search activities, we apply the behavioral strategy lens to explain the observed changes in strategic alliance portfolios’ diversity driven by factors of the external (environmental jolts) and internal (relative performance) environments. We test our proposed theoretical framework by tracing the evolution of telecommunication industry firms’ alliance portfolios before and after the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the 2000 market crash.
Kernel-based Classifier for Iris Recognition

Kernel-based nonlinear feature extraction and classification algorithms are a popular new research direction in machine learning and widely used in many fields. Firstly, we will give an overview of kernel Fisher discriminant analysis and support vector machine, and then the description of multi-class classification method applied for them. The performance of these two classification method is analyzed on CASIA II database
Prediction of Drug Clearance in Children: an Evaluation of the Predictive Performance of Several Models

The objective of this study is to evaluate the predictive performance of several models to predict drug clearance in children ≤5 years of age. Six models (allometric model (data-dependent exponent), fixed exponent of 0.75 model, maturation model, body weight-dependent model, segmented allometric model, and age-dependent exponent model) were evaluated in this study. From the literature, the clearance values for six drugs from neonates to adults were obtained. External data were used to evaluate the predictive performance of these models in children ≤5 years of age. With the exception of a fixed exponent of 0.75, the mean predicted clearance in most of the age groups was within ≤50% prediction error. Individual clearance prediction was erratic by all models and cannot be used reliably to predict individual clearance. Maturation, body weight-dependent, and segmented allometric models to predict clearances of drugs in children ≤5 years of age are of limited practical value during drug development due to the lack of availability of data. Age-dependent exponent model can be used for the selection of first-in-children dose during drug development.
Designing healthcare games and applications for toddlers

Healthcare games are becoming increasingly popular because of their potential to improve patients' wellbeing before, during, and after medical treatment. Even though young children (here referred to as toddlers) make up a growing group of gamers, there is a lack of research focusing on healthcare games for this group. Since toddlers often express unmotivated behavior towards receiving medical treatment, the potential of healthcare gaming applications for this group should be explored. The purpose of our study is to provide a set of research-derived design considerations for healthcare games and applications for toddlers. Our approach included an initial best practices collection through a workshop involving experts from pediatric healthcare and pedagogy, and an affinity diagramming categorization by a focus group with HCI and health researchers. This resulted in a robust set of best practices that was further used for establishing a connection with game components and transformation into design considerations. As an illustrating example we present a prototype of a healthcare game developed to improve nebulizer treatment for toddlers. The final result of this work is a set of key aspects to consider when designing healthcare games and applications for toddlers. The results should be useful for designers and researchers who work in the intersection between health and young user groups.
The genome of the medieval Black Death agent (extended abstract)

The genome of a 650 year old Yersinia pestis bacteria, responsible for the medieval Black Death, was recently sequenced and assembled into 2,105 contigs from the main chromosome. According to the point mutation record, the medieval bacteria could be an ancestor of most Yersinia pestis extant species, which opens the way to reconstructing the organization of these contigs using a comparative approach. We show that recent computational paleogenomics methods, aiming at reconstructing the organization of ancestral genomes from the comparison of extant genomes, can be used to correct, order and complete the contig set of the Black Death agent genome, providing a full chromosome sequence, at the nucleotide scale, of this ancient bacteria. This sequence suggests that a burst of mobile elements insertions predated the Black Death, leading to an exceptional genome plasticity and increase in rearrangement rate.
Design challenges and solutions for ultra-high-density monolithic 3D ICs

Monolithic 3D ICs (M3D) are an emerging technology that offers an ultra-high-density 3D integration due to the extremely small size of monolithic inter-tier vias. We explore various design styles available in M3D and present design techniques to obtain GDSII-level signoff quality results for each of these styles. We also discuss various challenges facing each style and provide solutions to them.
Efficient Numerical Method for Analyzing Coupling Structures of Photonic Crystal Waveguides

Efficient coupling of light into and out of photonic crystal (PhC) waveguides is important for applications in photonic integrated circuits. An efficient numerical method is presented for analyzing two-dimensional structures that connect PhC waveguides with conventional waveguides (or free space). The method relies on rigorous boundary conditions for terminating both types of waveguides to obtain small computation domains. These boundary conditions are derived from square root operators for conventional waveguides and Bloch mode expansions in PhC waveguides.
The myosin-interacting protein SMYD1 is essential for sarcomere organization

Assembly, maintenance and renewal of sarcomeres require highly organized and balanced folding, transport, modification and degradation of sarcomeric proteins. However, the molecules that mediate these processes are largely unknown. Here, we isolated the zebrafish mutant flatline (fla), which shows disturbed sarcomere assembly exclusively in heart and fast-twitch skeletal muscle. By positional cloning we identified a nonsense mutation within the SET- and MYND-domain-containing protein 1 gene (smyd1) to be responsible for the fla phenotype. We found SMYD1 expression to be restricted to the heart and fast-twitch skeletal muscle cells. Within these cell types, SMYD1 localizes to both the sarcomeric M-line, where it physically associates with myosin, and the nucleus, where it supposedly represses transcription through its SET and MYND domains. However, although we found transcript levels of thick filament chaperones, such as Hsp90a1 and UNC-45b, to be severely upregulated in fla, its histone methyltransferase activity – mainly responsible for the nuclear function of SMYD1 – is dispensable for sarcomerogenesis. Accordingly, sarcomere assembly in fla mutant embryos can be reconstituted by ectopically expressing histone methyltransferase-deficient SMYD1. By contrast, ectopic expression of myosin-binding-deficient SMYD1 does not rescue fla mutants, implicating an essential role for the SMYD1–myosin interaction in cardiac and fast-twitch skeletal muscle thick filament assembly.
Improving the Precision of Web Search for Medical Domain using Automatic Query Expansion

In this paper, we have analyzed three ways of improving precision of search results of web search for medical domain for short queries using automatic query expansion from the point of view of a layperson who is seeking more information about a particular medical term. We are using Google to perform the web search. The three approaches are: (1) retrieving synonyms of the query term using UMLS (2) retrieving most frequently occurring medical terms using pseudo feedback (3) retrieving synonyms of the query term using WordNet. The final query is generated by ORing the query term with the set of terms obtained using one of the three approaches and then ANDing the query so expanded with its semantic type retrieved using UMLS. We have tested our system for a total of 30 queries and our results indicate that for such kind of search, the first & third approaches improve the precision of results by 13% as compared to query search using Google, while the second approach does not give better results, but in fact reduces precision by 32%.
Prejudicial and Stereotypical Attitudes about the Issue of Obesity: An Action Project

Scientific literature about stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes toward obese people indicates rejection toward the obese individuals and preferences toward thin and average ones, as well as a stereotypical profile that attributes to obese people traits such as weakness, laziness, and sickness, while to thin and average people characteristics as beauty, strength, health, and successfulness (Tiggemann & Anesbury, 2000; Carels & Musher-Eizenman, 2010). One of the most useful strategies for reducing the effects of negative prejudices and stereotypes toward the obesity and obese people is constituted by contact, achievable both in face to face and imagined setting. Purpose: analysis of the exposure effects to stimuli (training course about prejudice on obesity) functional to reduce negative attitudes toward obese people. Participants: 55 psychology university students at University of Catania, Sicily (Italy). Implicit and explicit measures: 1) Anti-fat Attitudes and Dislike of Fat People Scale; 2) Semantic Differential Technique for Fat and Thin People Representation and Physical Self; 3) Fat Stereotypes Questionnaire; 4) GNAT (Nosek & Banaji, 2001). All measures were used before and after the training course (for three months) about the “obesity issue”. Results (before-after the training course): a) low levels of anti-fat prejudice and of dislike of fat people; b) absence of change of fat stereotypes; c) significant increase in fat and thin people positive representation, as well as in self-representation; d) significant effects of the training course only in relation to an increase of accuracy in the GNAT application. Future suggestions regarding to the effects of the direct and imagined contact with obese people functional to reduce negative attitudes toward these target were discussed.
Inhibition of brain angiotensin III attenuates sympathetic hyperactivity and cardiac dysfunction in rats post-myocardial infarction.

AIMS In rats post-myocardial infarction (MI), activation of angiotensinergic pathways in the brain contributes to sympathetic hyperactivity and progressive left ventricle (LV) dysfunction. The present study examined whether angiotensin III (Ang III) is one of the main effector peptides of the brain renin-angiotensin system controlling these effects. METHODS AND RESULTS After coronary artery ligation, Wistar rats were infused intracerebroventricularly for 4 weeks via minipumps with vehicle, the aminopeptidase A (APA) inhibitor RB150 (0.3 mg/day), which blocks the formation of brain Ang III, or losartan (0.25 mg/day). Blood pressure (BP), heart rate, and renal sympathetic nerve activity in response to air stress and acute changes in BP were measured, and LV function was evaluated by echocardiography and Millar catheter. At 4 weeks post-MI, brain APA activity was increased, sympatho-excitatory and pressor responses to air stress enhanced, and arterial baroreflex function impaired. LV end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) was increased and ejection fraction (EF) and maximal first derivative of change in pressure over time (dP/dt(max)) were decreased. Central infusion of RB150 during 4 weeks post-MI normalized brain APA activity and responses to stress and baroreflex function, and improved LVEDP, EF, and dP/dt(max). Central infusion of losartan had similar effects but was somewhat less effective, and had no effect on brain APA activity. CONCLUSION These results indicate that brain APA and Ang III appear to play a pivotal role in the sympathetic hyperactivity and LV dysfunction in rats post-MI. RB150 may be a potential candidate for central nervous system-targeted therapy post-MI.
Simulation of dissolution and precipitation in porous media

[1] We apply the lattice-Boltzmann method to simulate fluid flow and dissolution and precipitation in the reactive solid phase in a porous medium. Both convection and diffusion as well as temporal geometrical changes in the pore space are taken into account. The numerical results show that at high Peclet and Peclet-Damkohler numbers, a wormhole is formed and permeability increases greatly because of the dissolution process. At low Peclet and high Peclet-Damkohler numbers, reactions mainly occur at the inlet boundary, resulting in the face dissolution and the slowest increase of the permeability in the dissolution process. At moderate Peclet and Peclet-Damkohler numbers, reactions are generally nonuniform, with more in the upstream and less in the downstream. At very small Peclet-Damkohler number, dissolution or precipitation is highly uniform, and these two processes can be approximately reversed by each other. These numerical examples have not been yet confirmed by physical experimentation. Nevertheless, we believe that these simulation results can serve to estimate the effects of dissolution and precipitation during reactive fluid flow.
Dense accurate urban mapping from spherical RGB-D images

This paper presents a methodology to combine information from a sequence of RGB-D spherical views acquired by a home-made multi-stereo device in order to improve the computed depth images both in terms of accuracy and completeness. This methodology is embedded in a larger visual mapping framework aiming to produce accurate and dense topometric urban maps. Our method is based on two main filtering stages. Firstly, we perform a segmentation process considering both geometric and photometric image constraints, followed by a regularization step (spatial-integration). We then proceed to a fusion stage where the geometric information is further refined by considering the depth images of nearby frames (temporal integration). This methodology can be applied to other projective models, such as perspective stereo images. Our approach is evaluated within the frameworks of image registration, localization and mapping, demonstrating higher accuracy and larger convergence domains over different datasets.
Downward Nominal-Wage Rigidity: Micro Evidence from Tobit Models

Les auteurs utilisent les chiffres des accords salariaux et des modeles tobit pour etudier le degre de rigidite a la baisse des salaires nominaux au Canada. S'inspirant des principaux faits stylises, ils permettent a la variance de la distribution theorique des variations salariales de fluctuer dans le temps et font intervenir dans leurs modeles les couts d'etiquetage afin d'en determiner l'influence.
Isolation and behavior of Escherichia coli deletion mutants lacking chemotaxis functions

Six Escherichia coli che loci (cheA,-B,-R,-W,-Y, and Z) are located in two adjacent operons that map at minute 42 on the chromosome. Point mutants defective in any of these six functions have aberrant swimming patterns and are generally nonchemotactic. Deletions within the two major che gene operons were isolated in order to examine epistatic interactions among these genes. We first constructed a specialized transducing phage (lambda che22), which carries both of the che operons and their associated promoters. Deleted lambda che22 derivatives were selected by chelating agent inactivation, and these derivatives were characterized by mapping them against a series of host strains with point mutations. Representative nonpolar deletions were then transferred into the E. coli chromosome by homologous recombination. Although the phenotype of cheR mutants (smooth swimming) was expected to be epistatic to that of cheB mutants (tumbly swimming), we found that deletion mutants lacking both of these functions exhibited frequent directional changes or tumbling episodes as they swam. An examination of larger deletions indicated that both the cheA-cheW and cheY-cheZ functions were required for the anomalous tumbling behavior observed in these mutants. Loss of the cheB function was also correlated with an inverted behavioral response to sodium acetate, a strong repellent of wild-type cells. These findings indicate that an important component of the signal transducing machinery may be altered in cheB mutants.
A query optimization trategy for implementing multi dimensional model in spatial database system

Spatial Data Warehouses (SDWs) combine spatial databases (SDBs) and data warehouses (DWs) allowing analysis of historical data. This data can be queried using Spatial On-Line Analytical Processing (SOLAP). SDW and SOLAP systems are emerging areas that raise several research issues. In this paper, we refer to a different problem existing in SDWs that motivated us to propose a framework - a conceptual multidimensional model able to express users' requirements for SDW and SOLAP applications. We present a different research direction that is important to consider providing satisfactory solutions for SDW and for SOLAP systems. That important area is spatial query optimization. For the past several years, the research on spatial database systems has actively progressed because the applications using the spatial information such as geographic information systems (GIS), computer aided design (CAD) and multimedia systems have increased. However, most of the research has dealt with only a part of spatial database systems such as data models, spatial indexes, spatial join algorithms, or cost models. There has been a little research on the spatial query optimization which can integrate them. Most of the spatial query optimization techniques published until now has not properly reflected the characteristics of the SDBs. This paper presents query optimization strategies which take the characteristics of SDBs into account. The application of standard query processing and optimization techniques in the context of an integrated SDB environment is discussed.
Lethal Influenza Virus Infection in Macaques Is Associated with Early Dysregulation of Inflammatory Related Genes

The enormous toll on human life during the 1918–1919 Spanish influenza pandemic is a constant reminder of the potential lethality of influenza viruses. With the declaration by the World Health Organization of a new H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, and with continued human cases of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus infection, a better understanding of the host response to highly pathogenic influenza viruses is essential. To this end, we compared pathology and global gene expression profiles in bronchial tissue from macaques infected with either the reconstructed 1918 pandemic virus or the highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus A/Vietnam/1203/04. Severe pathology was observed in respiratory tissues from 1918 virus-infected animals as early as 12 hours after infection, and pathology steadily increased at later time points. Although tissues from animals infected with A/Vietnam/1203/04 also showed clear signs of pathology early on, less pathology was observed at later time points, and there was evidence of tissue repair. Global transcriptional profiles revealed that specific groups of genes associated with inflammation and cell death were up-regulated in bronchial tissues from animals infected with the 1918 virus but down-regulated in animals infected with A/Vietnam/1203/04. Importantly, the 1918 virus up-regulated key components of the inflammasome, NLRP3 and IL-1β, whereas these genes were down-regulated by A/Vietnam/1203/04 early after infection. TUNEL assays revealed that both viruses elicited an apoptotic response in lungs and bronchi, although the response occurred earlier during 1918 virus infection. Our findings suggest that the severity of disease in 1918 virus-infected macaques is a consequence of the early up-regulation of cell death and inflammatory related genes, in which additive or synergistic effects likely dictate the severity of tissue damage.
Content-aware Email Multiclass Classification Categorize Emails According to Senders

People nowadays are overwhelmed by tons of coming emails everyday at work or in their daily life. The large quantities of emails keep causing confusions. Not only spam emails are considered to be 'junk', but also unwanted emails (e.g. advertisements) cause people to waste time on reading them. Therefore, it becomes urgent to develop reliable automatic categorization of emails to save the trouble. This project aims at researching on ways doing supervised and unsupervised classification of emails according to email content, in particular, putting emails into folders in terms of role of email senders.
Contour-Point Signature : A New Descriptor for Matching Rigid Shapes with a Single Closed Contour

Shape matching and point correspondence recovering play a fundamental role in applications like pattern and object recognition, shape classification, image alignment and registration, visual information data mining, and many other computer vision related areas, which recently became active research disciplines due to the increasing needs in many practical fields. This article introduces the Contour-Point Signature (CPS), a novel technique that produces features that are invariant to translation, scaling, and rotation. The approach make use of CPS to find the correspondences of points extracted from the contours of two similar shapes and to establish a relation to map arbitrary points from one shape to another.