Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using electromagnetic emanations for variability characterization in Flash-based FPGAs

An ElectroMagnetic analysis (EMA) technique is applied to Flash-based FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) ProASIC3E to measure the delay variability. Measurements show that delay variations can reach 40% according to the mapping, placement and routing used in the FPGA array, while the synthesis tool analysis show differences lower than 7%. Comparisons between the use of EMA technique in Flash and SRAM-based FPGAs are presented. The Flash-based FPGA configurable blocks and routing structures are modeled at the electrical level. Then, SPICE simulations are performed to compare the predictive variability to the measurements ones. Results obtained with EMA can support designers on selecting different parts of the FPGA array, such as distinct mapping, placements and routing wires according to application and provide a valuable feedback for the FPGA's manufacture company.
Use of the Clark Twin Block functional appliance with and without an upper labial bow: a randomized controlled trial.

OBJECTIVES To compare dentoalveolar and skeletal changes in two groups of Class II division 1 patients treated with different designs of Clark's Twin Block (CTB), with (Group 1) or without (Group 2) an upper labial bow. MATERIALS AND METHODS A randomized controlled trial was conducted in the Department of Orthodontics at the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, UK. Sixty-two white subjects (aged 10-14 years at the start of treatment, minimum overjet > 6 mm, molar relationship at least ½ unit Class II) were recruited. Subjects were divided into age- and sex-matched pairs, were randomly allocated to treatment with either appliance design, and were treated for 12 months, at which time additional data were collected. RESULTS Sixty participants were available for final data collection. The two groups were well matched with respect to age (mean 12.5 years in Group 1; 12.3 years in Group 2). No statistical difference was noted between groups for any dentoalveolar or skeletal variables measured. Both groups experienced a reduction in overjet as a result of maxillary incisor retroclination, mandibular incisor proclination, and forward positioning of the pogonion. Maxillary molar distalization, mandibular molar mesialization, and ANB reduction also occurred in both groups. CONCLUSIONS The addition of a maxillary labial bow to the CTB has no influence on dentoalveolar or skeletal changes, or on rate of overjet reduction, in relation to appliance therapy.
Selection of an escape variant of Borrelia burgdorferi by use of bactericidal monoclonal antibodies to OspB

Two immunoglobulin G (IgG) monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) to outer surface protein B (CB2 and CB6), affinity purified from mouse ascitic fluid, exhibited concentration-dependent inhibitory and bactericidal properties against Borrelia burgdorferi after a 24-h incubation period in spirochete medium. Fab fragments derived from these MAbs showed the same effects, indicating that they were not caused by agglutination of the organisms by the intact MAbs. The inhibition of spirochete growth in cultures containing MAbs was also detected by spectrophotometric analysis of the media. CB2 did not inhibit the growth of Borrelia hermsii or the BEP4 strain of B. burgdorferi, neither of which is recognized by the MAb. Affinity-purified IgG from hybridoma supernatants had similar effects on B. burgdorferi as the ascitic-fluid-derived IgG did, indicating that the inhibitory and bactericidal properties were not due to nonspecific toxic contaminants. The bactericidal properties of the MAbs were not complement dependent as there was none in the serum-free system. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis of B. burgdorferi organisms surviving after exposure to CB2 revealed an escape variant which failed to express OspB. The continued presence of OspA in these escape variants indicates that the lack of OspB was not due to the loss of the plasmid which contains the genes for both of these proteins.
Underage Drinking: A Developmental Framework

A developmental framework for understanding and addressing the problem of underage alcohol consumption is presented. The first section presents the rationale for a developmental approach, including striking age-related data on patterns of onset, prevalence, and course of alcohol use and disorders in young people. The second section examines the fundamental meaning of a developmental approach to conceptualizing underage drinking. The third section delineates contemporary principles of developmental psychopathology as a guide to future research and intervention efforts. Strategic, sensitive, and effective efforts to address the problem of underage drinking will require a developmentally informed approach to research, prevention, and treatment.
Tolerance after liver transplantation: Where are we?

Impeccable management of immunosuppression is required to ensure the best longterm outcomes for liver transplant recipients. This is particularly challenging for children who arguably need 8 decades of graft and patient survival. Too little risks chronic, often subclinical allo‐immune injury while too much risks insidious and cumulative toxicities. Historically, immunosuppression minimization or withdrawal has been a strategy to optimize the longevity of liver transplant recipients. The literature is sprinkled with single‐center reports of operationally tolerant patients ‐ those with apparently normal liver function and liver tests. However, without biopsy evidence of immunological quiescence, confidence in the phenotypic assignment of tolerance is shaky. More recently, multicenter trials of immunosuppression withdrawal for highly selected, stable, longterm adult and pediatric liver recipients have shown tolerance rates, based on both biochemical and histological assessment, of 40% and 60%, respectively. Extended biochemical and histologic follow‐up of children over 8 years, equivalent to 7+ years off of drug, suggests that operational tolerance is robust. Therefore, clearly, immunosuppression can be completely and safety withdrawn from highly‐selected subsets of adults and children. However, these trials have also confirmed that clinically ideal recipients ‐ those eligible for immunosuppression withdrawal trial ‐ can harbor significant and worrisome inflammation and/or fibrosis. Although the etiology and prognosis of these findings remain unknown, it is reasonable to surmise that they may reflect an anti‐donor immune response that is insufficiently controlled. To achieve the outcomes that we are seeking and that our patients are demanding, we desperately need noninvasive but accurate biomarkers that identify whether immunosuppression is neither too much nor too little but “just right. ” Until these are available, liver histology remains the gold standard to assess allograft health and guide immunosuppression management. Liver Transplantation 23 1601–1614 2017 AASLD.
Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition With Principal Component Analysis: A Novel Approach for Extracting Respiratory Rate and Heart Rate From Photoplethysmographic Signal

The photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal measures the local variations of blood volume in tissues, reflecting the peripheral pulse modulated by cardiac activity, respiration, and other physiological effects. Therefore, PPG can be used to extract the vital cardiorespiratory signals like heart rate (HR), and respiratory rate (RR) and this will reduce the number of sensors connected to the patient's body for recording these vital signs. In this paper, we propose an algorithm based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition with principal component analysis (EEMD-PCA) as a novel approach to estimate HR and RR simultaneously from PPG signal. To examine the performance of the proposed algorithm, we used 310 (from 35 subjects) and 632 (from 42 subjects) epochs of simultaneously recorded electrocardiogram, PPG, and respiratory signal extracted from MIMIC (Physionet ATM data bank) and Capnobase database, respectively. Results of EEMD-PCA-based extraction of HR and RR from PPG signal showed that the median RMS error (1st and 3rd quartiles) obtained in MIMIC data set for RR was 0.89 (0, 1.78) breaths/min, for HR was 0.57 (0.30, 0.71) beats/min and in Capnobase data set it was 2.77 (0.50, 5.9) breaths/min and 0.69 (0.54, 1.10) beats/min for RR and HR, respectively. These results illustrated that the proposed EEMD-PCA approach is more accurate in estimating HR and RR than other existing methods. Efficient and reliable extraction of HR and RR from the pulse oximeter's PPG signal will help patients for monitoring HR and RR with low cost and less discomfort.
Heterogeneous Nuclear Ribonucleoprotein L Interacts with the 3′ Border of the Internal Ribosomal Entry Site of Hepatitis C Virus

ABSTRACT Translation initiation of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA occurs by internal entry of a ribosome into the 5′ nontranslated region in a cap-independent manner. The HCV RNA sequence from about nucleotide 40 up to the N terminus of the coding sequence of the core protein is required for efficient internal initiation of translation, though the precise border of the HCV internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) has yet to be determined. Several cellular proteins have been proposed to direct HCV IRES-dependent translation by binding to the HCV IRES. Here we report on a novel cellular protein that specifically interacts with the 3′ border of the HCV IRES in the core-coding sequence. This protein with an apparent molecular mass of 68 kDa turned out to be heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein L (hnRNP L). The binding of hnRNP L to the HCV IRES correlates with the translational efficiencies of corresponding mRNAs. This finding suggests that hnRNP L may play an important role in the translation of HCV mRNA through the IRES element.
Stationary Markov Equilibria

Conditions are established under which there are equilibria (in various settings) described by ergodic Markov processes with a Borel state space S. Let [Rho](S) denote the probability measures on S, and let s [approaching] G(s) [is a subset of] [Rho](S) be a (possibly empty-valued) correspondence with closed graph. A non-empty measurable set J [is a subset of] S is self-justified if G(s) [intersects] [Rho](J) is not empty for all s [an element of] J. A Time-Homogeneous Markov Equilibrium (THME) for G is a self-justified set J and a measurable selection II: J [approaching] [Rho] (J) from the restriction of G to J. The paper gives sufficient conditions for existence of compact self-justified sets, and applies the theorem: If G is convex-valued and has a compact self-justified set, then G has an THME with an ergodic measure. Coauthors are J. Geanakoplos, A. Mas-Colell, and A. McLennan. Copyright 1994 by The Econometric Society.
On the use of the quaternion generalized Gaussian distribution for footstep detection

We propose a method to detect human footsteps from a vector-quaternion signal acquired by a tri-axial geophone. The quaternion generalized Gaussian distribution (QGGD) is derived to parameterize variations in the vector-quaternion signal using a shape parameter, quantifying non-Gaussianity and quaternion augmented covariance matrix, quantifying inter-channel correlation. The detection of footsteps is then formulated as binary hypotheses tests in terms of the parameters of the QGGD. The effectiveness of the proposed metrics is evaluated on recorded seismic data.
NIST Rich Transcription 2002 Evaluation: A Preview

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been implementing evaluations of automatic speech transcription technologies for over 15 years. NIST has helped guide progress in these technologies by: creating increasingly challenging and realistic tests, helping to provide associated linguistic resources, employing uniform metrics and analyses across systems to a ssess performance, and sponsoring evaluation-related technology workshops. Over time, this approach has shown great progress in the technology as the test domains have become more difficult and error rates have almost consistently decreased. In conjunction w ith the new DARPA Effective, Affordable, Reusable Speech (EARS) Program, NIST has begun an evaluation effort to help move the stateof-the-art to the next level in the form of a Rich Transcription (RT) evaluation program. RT is defined to be an integrated combination of speech-to-text generation (STT) and metadata (MD) annotation as applied to multiple domains such as speech from Broadcast News, telephone conversations, and meetings. The Rich Transcription 2002 (RT-02) evaluation will have been the first in an ann ual series of evaluations and workshops focusing on this technology.
Brain Computer Interface-based Multimedia Controller

Music is a way of expressing our feelings and emotions in daily life. Suitable music can affect people in a positive way. However, current multimedia control methods, such as manual selection or automatic random mechanism which is now applied broadly in MP3 and CD player, cannot adaptively select suitable music according to the user's state. In this study, we proposed a novel brain computer interface (BCI)-based multimedia controller to help people to select suitable music according their cognitive states. In our system, a multimedia control MIDlet program built in the mobile phone was developed to recognize the user's cognitive state and select suitable music according his/her cognitive state. A wireless multi-channel electroencephalograph (EEG) acquisition module was also designed for monitoring the user's EEG. By the property of selecting suitable music type according to the user's cognitive state, our BCI-based mobile multimedia controller provides a novel prototype of multimedia controller.
Acupuncture treatment for ischaemic stroke in young adults: protocol for a randomised, sham-controlled clinical trial

Introduction Stroke in young adults is not uncommon. Although the overall incidence of stroke has been recently declining, the incidence of stroke in young adults is increasing. Traditional vascular risk factors are the main cause of young ischaemic stroke. Acupuncture has been shown to benefit stroke rehabilitation and ameliorate the risk factors for stroke. The aims of this study were to determine whether acupuncture treatment will be effective in improving the activities of daily living (ADL), motor function and quality of life (QOL) in patients of young ischaemic stroke, and in preventing stroke recurrence by controlling blood pressure, lipids and body weight. Methods and analysis In this randomised, sham-controlled, participant-blinded and assessor-blinded clinical trial, 120 patients between 18 and 45 years of age with a recent (within 1 month) ischaemic stroke will be randomised for an 8-week acupuncture or sham acupuncture treatment. The primary outcome will be the Barthel Index for ADL. The secondary outcomes will include the Fugl-Meyer Assessment for motor function; the World Health Organization Quality of Life BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) for QOL; and risk factors that are measured by ambulatory blood pressure, the fasting serum lipid, body mass index and waist circumference. Incidence of adverse events and long-term mortality and recurrence rate during a 10-year and 30-year follow-up will also be investigated. Ethics and dissemination Ethics approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of The Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University. Protocol V.3 was approved in June 2013. The results will be disseminated in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at international congresses. The results will also be disseminated to patients by telephone during follow-up calls enquiring on the patient's post-study health status. Trial registration number ChiCTR-TRC- 13003317; Pre-results.
Compare with higher standard

I agree with Raju and Hankey that dabigatran has some benefits over warfarin in people with atrial fibrillation.1 2 However, the RE-LY study, on which they base this conclusion, compares dabigatran with a worse standard of anticoagulation control with warfarin …
Replacing Magic Bullets With Beneficial Pleiotropy in Atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a complex process, involving the interaction of multiple cell types and processes. The next generation of therapeutics needs to focus on pathways exerting multiple beneficial effects on multiple processes in multiple cell types. Theories of atherogenesis have evolved over the decades, with established concepts often being incorporated into new theories. This is the natural progression of science; the old theories are not necessarily discredited—in many cases, they explained what was known at the time—but rather new models emerge that incorporate new knowledge and change the emphasis placed on particular processes. Thus, “Time obliterates the fictions of opinion and confirms the decisions of nature” (Marcus Tullius Cicero). Each model is presented as the state of the art, and each is embraced by a new generation of opinion leaders. What has not changed, however, is the hope that each new theory of atherogenesis will result in a new magic bullet, a pharmacological ideal of a drug able to selectively target a disease without other effects on the body, originally defined by Paul Ehrlich for a drug for antibacterial therapy. Individual cell types, processes, and molecules have been sequentially implicated in theories of atherogenesis, such that the whole process can become viewed as driven by their dysfunction, and thus become targets for magic bullets. For example, endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, macrophages, T-lymphocytes, bone marrow–derived stem cells, or endogenous vessel wall–derived stem cells; processes such as lipid insudation, inflammation, cell proliferation, cell migration, cell death, or matrix breakdown; or the latest gene implicated by basic science or genome-wide association studies have all been presented as fundamental and necessary to atherosclerosis. As researchers, we test the validity of this concept for each cell type, process or molecule by increasing or decreasing its abundance, activity or expression, and determine whether it increases or …
Generalized Kernel-Based Visual Tracking

Kernel-based mean shift (MS) trackers have proven to be a promising alternative to stochastic particle filtering trackers. Despite its popularity, MS trackers have two fundamental drawbacks: 1) the template model can only be built from a single image, and 2) it is difficult to adaptively update the template model. In this paper, we generalize the plain MS trackers and attempt to overcome these two limitations. It is well known that modeling and maintaining a representation of a target object is an important component of a successful visual tracker. However, little work has been done on building a robust template model for kernel-based MS tracking. In contrast to building a template from a single frame, we train a robust object representation model from a large amount of data. Tracking is viewed as a binary classification problem, and a discriminative classification rule is learned to distinguish between the object and background. We adopt a support vector machine for training. The tracker is then implemented by maximizing the classification score. An iterative optimization scheme very similar to MS is derived for this purpose. Compared with the plain MS tracker, it is now much easier to incorporate online template adaptation to cope with inherent changes during the course of tracking. To this end, a sophisticated online support vector machine is used. We demonstrate successful localization and tracking on various data sets.
Bootstrap for Multifractal Analysis

Multifractal analysis, which mainly consists in estimating scaling exponents, has become a popular tool for empirical data analysis. Although widely used in different applications, the statistical performance and the reliability of the estimation procedures are still poorly known. Notably, little is known about confidence intervals, though they are of first importance in applications. The present work investigates the potential uses of bootstrap for multifractal estimation. Can bootstrap improve current estimation procedures or be used to obtain reliable confidence intervals? Comparing the statistical performance of different estimators, our major result is to show that bootstrap based procedures provide us both with accurate estimates and reliable confidence intervals. We believe that this brings substantial improvements to practical empirical multifractal analyses
Barbs Facilitate the Helical Penetration of Honeybee (Apis mellifera ligustica) Stingers

The stinger is a very small and efficient device that allows honeybees to perform two main physiological activities: repelling enemies and laying eggs for reproduction. In this study, we explored the specific characteristics of stinger penetration, where we focused on its movements and the effects of it microstructure. The stingers of Italian honeybees (Apis mellifera ligustica) were grouped and fixed onto four types of cubic substrates, before pressing into different substrates. The morphological characteristics of the stinger cross-sections were analyzed before and after penetration by microscopy. Our findings suggest that the honeybee stinger undergoes helical and clockwise rotation during penetration. We also found that the helical penetration of the stinger is associated directly with the spiral distribution of the barbs, thereby confirming that stinger penetration involves an advanced microstructure rather than a simple needle-like apparatus. These results provide new insights into the mechanism of honeybee stinger penetration.
CX3CL1: a potential chemokine widely involved in the process spinal metastases

Objectives The aim of our study was to investigate the general mechanism of spinal metastases from five different primary cancers: lung cancer, breast cancer, liver cancer, prostate cancer, and kidney cancer. Results From microarray analysis and validation by real-time polymerase chain reaction, CX3C chemokine ligand 1 (CX3CL1) appeared to be a potential chemokine widely involved in the process of spinal metastases. Further studies revealed that, compared with normal controls, serum samples from patients with spinal metastases from the lung (P < 0.01), kidney (P < 0.05) and prostate (P < 0.05) contained significantly higher levels of CX3CL1, whereas those from patients with spinal metastases from the liver and breast had a tendency to contain higher levels of CX3CL1 but without significance. Immunohistochemical staining for the expression of CX3C chemokine receptor 1 (CX3CR1), the receptor for CX3CL1, in all spinal metastases samples showed negative staining. Materials and Methods Cancellous bone in the spine from patients with and without spinal metastases was collected for mRNA microarray study, and then differentially expressed mRNAs related to chemokines were further confirmed by real-time polymerase chain reaction. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect the serum level of the selected chemokines and immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression level of corresponding receptors in tumor. Conclusions Our present study showed that CX3CL1 is associated with the process of spinal metastases from different primary cancers.
Hand orthosis as a writing aid in writer's cramp

Writer's cramp is a focal, task‐specific dystonia of the hand and wrist. It primarily affects people who do a significant amount of writing, and causes difficulties in writing. We present five cases with writer's cramp who showed improvement in their writing ability with an applied hand orthosis. © 2001 Movement Disorder Society.