Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On-Chip Aging Sensor Circuits for Reliable Nanometer MOSFET Digital Circuits

Accurate performance-degradation monitoring of nanometer MOSFET digital circuits is one of the most critical issues in adaptive design techniques for overcoming the performance degradation due to aging phenomena such as negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) and hot carrier injection (HCI). Therefore, this paper proposes new on-chip aging sensor circuits which deploy a threshold voltage detector for monitoring the performance degradation of an aged MOSFET. The new aging sensor circuits measure the threshold voltage difference between a NBTI/HCI stressed MOSFET device and a NBTI/HCI unstressed MOSFET device using an inverter chain and a phase comparator and digitalize the phase difference induced by the threshold voltage difference. The proposed sensor circuits achieve a direct correlation between the threshold voltage degradation and the phase difference (a phase difference resolution of 1 ns per 0.01 V threshold voltage shift). Also, the circuits are almost independent of temperature variation due to symmetrical circuit structures. A 45 nm CMOS technology and predictive NBTI/HCI models have been used to implement and evaluate the proposed circuits. The implemented layout size is 18.58 x 7.97 μm2; the post-layout power consumption is 18.57 μW during NBTI/HCI stress mode and 30.86 μW during NBTI/HCI measurement mode on average.
An Evaluation of Japanese Leading Indicators

This paper evaluates the performances of Japanese leading indicators in predicting business cycle turning points. We extract the business cycle component in leading indicators using the frequency selective filter proposed by Baxter and King (1999), and we try to clarify empirically whether or not the leading composite index and its component series truly lead the business cycle turning point dates officially determined by the Japanese government. We argue that if we utilize the evaluated properties of the component series, we may construct a composite leading indicator which has some desirable properties as requested. As an illustration we provide one such example.
Chromosome abnormalities in patients with hairy cell leukemia

We evaluated chromosomes from 20 patients with hairy cell leukemia (HCL) to ascertain the frequency and type of consistent chromosomal abnormalities. Samples from 17 patients were obtained from peripheral blood cultures grown 24 and 48 hours without phytohemagglutinin, or from bone marrow samples. Two male patients had similar, consistent abnormalities; one patient's karyotype was 46, X,+12; that of the second was 46, X,+C marker. In the latter case, the distal long arm of the C marker most closely resembled chromosome No. 12 from band q14 to q terminal, but the short arm and proximal long arm were of undetermined origin. Both karyotypes lacked the Y chromosome. A third patient had, in one sample, a single abnormal cell with an extra No. 3 and an extra No. 12 (48, XY,+3,+12), and in a later sample, a second cell of poor morphology which also could have been trisomic for No. 12. The two patients with consistent chromosome abnormalities had rapidly progressive disease and a relatively short clinical course from the time of diagnosis (5 and 7 months, respectively). Further data are needed, but the results thus far suggest that patients with consistent chromosome abnormalities could be considered as candidates for aggressive combination chemotherapy.
The basal ganglia and training of arithmetic fluency

The role of dopamine neurons in reward processing is well-established, as is the observation of reward-related responses in the striatum, a region to which these midbrain dopamine neurons project. The reward-prediction error signals generated in the midbrain may play a role in the striatum in learning, as they help to shape expectations about future events based on prior experiences. The goal of the current experiment was to use principles of striatal function in order to optimize learning in an arithmetic domain. We created a training program that we believed would lead to increased arithmetic fluency by maximally engaging the striatum, through the use of contingent feedback, uncertainty regarding performance, and incentives for correct responses. Both experimental and control participants, who completed training focusing on arithmetic calculation and digit-entry respectively, showed improvement on a task involving the addition of a double-digit and a single-digit number following training, as successful performance on the task required accurate computations and entry of the solution within a narrow response window. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after training while participants performed this task, in order to examine the effect of feedback on activity in the caudate nucleus and to determine if learning signals generated by the striatum during arithmetic training are able to modify quantity representations in parietal cortex. Results indicated activation of both the caudate nucleus and the hIPS region. Activation of the caudate nucleus replicated previous work, as it showed the prototypical pattern of activity that distinguished between positive and negative feedback. Activation of the hIPS region was not surprising, given the focus on arithmetic calculation, but this region also exhibited feedback-sensitive activation that differed between sessions and groups, possibly indicating the common influence of a reinforcement learning system.
Electron transport to periplasmic nitrate reductase (NapA) of Wolinella succinogenes is independent of a NapC protein

The rumen bacterium Wolinella succinogenes grows by respiratory nitrate ammonification with formate as electron donor. Whereas the enzymology and coupling mechanism of nitrite respiration is well known, nitrate reduction to nitrite has not yet been examined. We report here that intact cells and cell fractions catalyse nitrate and chlorate reduction by reduced viologen dyes with high specific activities. A gene cluster encoding components of a putative periplasmic nitrate reductase system (napA, G, H, B, F, L, D) was sequenced. The napA gene was inactivated by inserting a kanamycin resistance gene cassette. The resulting mutant did not grow by nitrate respiration and did not reduce nitrate during growth by fumarate respiration, in contrast to the wild type. An antigen was detected in wild‐type cells using an antiserum raised against the periplasmic nitrate reductase (NapA) from Paracoccus pantotrophus. This antigen was absent in the W. succinogenes napA mutant. It is concluded that the periplasmic nitrate reductase NapA is the only respiratory nitrate reductase in W. succinogenes, although a second nitrate‐reducing enzyme is apparently induced in the napA mutant. The nap cluster of W. succinogenes lacks a napC gene whose product is thought to function in quinol oxidation and electron transfer to NapA in other bacteria. The W. succinogenes genome encodes two members of the NapC/NirT family, NrfH and FccC. Characterization of corresponding deletion mutants indicates that neither of these two proteins is required for nitrate respiration. A mutant lacking the genes encoding respiratory nitrite reductase (nrfHA) had wild‐type properties with respect to nitrate respiration. A model of the electron transport chain of nitrate respiration is proposed in which one or more of the napF, G, H and L gene products mediate electron transport from menaquinol to the periplasmic NapAB complex. Inspection of the W. succinogenes genome sequence suggests that ammonia formation from nitrate is catalysed exclusively by periplasmic respiratory enzymes.
Value-Based Planning for Teams of Agents in Stochastic Partially Observable Environments

Een belangrijke vereiste van beslissingsondersteunende systemen is het vermogen om te redeneren over onzekerheid. Dit is een complex probleem, vooral als er meerdere actoren bij zijn betrokken. Kijk bijvoorbeeld naar een team van brandweermannen wiens doel het is om, slechts gebruik makende van lokale waarnemingen, een grote brand te blussen in een woonwijk. In dit geval is de omgeving stochastische omdat de agents onzeker zijn met betrekking tot: 1) het effect van hun handelen, 2) de werkelijke toestand van de omgeving, en 3) de acties die de andere agenten te nemen. Deze onzekerheden maken het probleem computationeel te complex. In dit proefschrift zijn dergelijke besluitvormingsproblemen geformaliseerd met behulp van een stochastisch, discreet tijd model genaamd Decentralized Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (Dec-POMDP). Het eerste deel van dit proefschrift beschrijft een op 'value functions' gebaseerde aanpak voor Dec-POMDPs, gebruik makend van zogenaamde Bayesian games. In het tweede deel worden verschillende vormen van structuur in deze aanpak geidentificeerd en benut om beter schaling gedrag te realiseren.
Immune Response of Theileria sp.‐infected Sheep to Recombinant Theileria Proteins

Sheep and goats in northwest China suffer from theileriosis from infection with Theileria sp. (China), resulting in large economic losses. To investigate the immune response to infection with Theileria sp. (China), parameters of cellular and humoral immunity of experimentally infected sheep against two recombinantly expressed Theileria proteins were investigated. The in vitro proliferative response of blood mononuclear cells to a recombinant T. annulata membrane protein and a recombinant Theileria sp. (China) homologue to T. annulata surface protein, both putative membrane proteins, was significantly elevated and significant amounts of specific immunoglobulins were produced against both.
Community residential treatment for schizophrenia: Two‐year follow‐up

Two-year outcome data from a study comparing two kinds of treatment given similar groups of young, newly diagnosed, unmarried schizophrenic patients deemed in need of hospitalization are reported. The experimental program, Soteria, is a nonmedical, psychosocial program with minimal use of antipsychotic drugs; it is staffed by nonprofessionals and located in a home in the community. The control program is a short-stay, crisisoriented inpatient service in a community mental health center where neuroleptic drugs are the principal treatment. The experimental group had significantly longer initial stays, and only 8 per cent received neuroleptics during their initial admission. Over the two-year follow-up period, there were no significant differences between the groups in readmissions or levels of symptomatology. However, experimental subjects significantly less often received medications, used less outpatient care, showed significantly better occupational levels, and were more able to live independently.
Liberalisation and the value relevance of accrual accounting information: evidence from the Johannesburg securities exchange

Using panel data from 118 firms across a time period of 17 years and a battery of tests, this paper examines two research questions that pertain to the expected gains stemming from corporate information liberalisation through the adoption of international accounting (financial reporting) standards. Results indicated that accrual accounting data at aggregate (market-wide) level did not show break point(s) around the time of critical corporate information liberalisation years. At the microlevel, panel data tests on a version of Ohlson's (1995) model showed poor fits, but initially indicated some improvement (adjusted R-squares of between 12% and 25%) in value relevance in the post-information liberalisation period. However, when scale issues were addressed in cross-sectional level-type panel regressions, the difference in the R-squares vanished; suggesting that the value relevance of accounting information did not improve in the post-liberalisation period.
Transferring the Investors in People concept from the UK to The Netherlands

A key issue in international management is the extent to which management practices are converging in response to the pressures of globalisation, and the ready availability to managers in all parts of the world of the same concepts of what constitutes best practice in the different management disciplines. In some instances convergence may be encouraged by Government action. This is the case with the introduction into The Netherlands of the Investors in People (IiP) scheme that originated in the UK. IiP is a benchmark award, given to organisations that can demonstrate that they meet a set of criteria that relate to employee management and the commitment of resources to training. This article is a review of the introduction of IiP in The Netherlands, with the aim of seeing what insights are provided in relation to the cross‐cultural transfer of employment relations practice. Two case studies are used to explore the issues from the perspective of organisations working towards the standard in the two countries. It is concluded that the IiP standard can be transferred to another country, but that modifications have to be made to aspects of its organisation to take account of national differences. The implications of the transfer are discussed in relation to the convergence debate.
Blind Image Deblurring Using Weighted Sum of Gaussian Kernels for Point Spread Function Estimation

SUMMARY Point spread function (PSF) estimation plays a paramount role in image deblurring processing, and traditionally it is solved by parameter estimation of a certain preassumed PSF shape model. In real life, the PSF shape is generally arbitrary and complicated, and thus it is assumed in this manuscript that a PSF may be decomposed as a weighted sum of a certain number of Gaussian kernels, with weight coe ﬃ cients estimated in an alternating manner, and an l 1 norm-based total variation (TV l 1 ) algo-rithm is adopted to recover the latent image. Experiments show that the proposed method can achieve satisfactory performance on synthetic and realistic blurred images.
Does intratesticular testosterone administration modify the evolution of transitory testicular ischemia in pre-pubertal rats?

PURPOSE Testicular torsion followed by ischemia results in variable degrees of infertility and until now there appears to be no effective way to recover it. Testosterone participation in the maintenance of male sexual organs and spermatogenesis led us to hypothesize that intratesticular administration could recover ischemic injury. MATERIALS AND METHODS We divided 40 Wistar rats in 2 groups, of 20 each. One group was control and the other underwent a 120-minute testicular ischemia by means of a vascular clamp on the left spermatic cord. Each group was further subdivided in 2 subgroups. The first one was observed and the second received intratesticular testosterone 25 mg. starting on the third day after injury and during the next 7 consecutive days. Half the animals were sacrificed 30 days after injury and the remaining ones after 60 days. Weight, volume, number of seminiferous tubules, histology and spermatogenesis of the same side and contralateral testes were examined. For statistical analysis ANOVA and Fisher's tests were applied. RESULTS It was found that testosterone was capable of acting upon volume and weight of the left testis (p=0.0001). The animals receiving intratesticular testosterone showed lower testicular weight and volume after 30 and 60 days, respectively. This subgroup also showed a higher number of seminiferous tubules, modified histology and absent spermatogenesis suggesting testicular atrophy. CONCLUSIONS We concluded that intratesticular injection of testosterone 25 mg. once a day during 7 consecutive days after transitory testicular ischemia causes ipsilateral testis atrophy. The animals in control group showed testicular histological recovery 60 days after injury. There were no significant histological differences in the contralateral testes.
Nonlinear Control Under Nonconstant Delays

The authors have developed a methodology for control of nonlinear systems in the presence of long delays, with large and rapid variation in the actuation or sensing path, or in the presence of long delays affecting the internal state of a system. In addition to control synthesis, they introduce tools to quantify the performance and the robustness properties of the designs provided in the book. The book is based on the concept of predictor feedback and infinite-dimensional backstepping transformation for linear systems and the authors guide the reader from the basic ideas of the concept - with constant delays only on the input - all the way through to nonlinear systems with state-dependent delays on the input as well as on system states. Several examples are presented that help the reader digest some of the intricacies in the methodology. Readers will find the book useful because the authors provide elegant and systematic treatments of long-standing problems in delay systems, such as systems with state-dependent delays that arise in many applications. In addition, the authors give all control designs by explicit formulae, making the book especially useful for engineers who have faced delay-related challenges and are concerned with actual implementations and they accompany all control designs with Lyapunov-based analysis for establishing stability and performance guarantees. Audience: This book is intended for researchers working on control of delay systems, including engineers, mathematicians, and students. Contents: Chapter 1: Introduction; Part I: Chapter 2: Linear Systems with Input and State Delays; Chapter 3: Linear Systems with Distributed Delays; Chapter 4: Application: Automotive Catalysts; Chapter 5: Nonlinear Systems with Input Delay; Part II: Chapter 6: Linear Systems with Time-Varying Input Delay; Chapter 7: Robustness of Linear Constant-Delay Predictor Feedback to Time-Varying Delay Perturbations; Chapter 8: Nonlinear Systems with Time-Varying Input Delay; Chapter 9: Nonlinear Systems with Simultaneous Time-Varying Delays on the Input and the State; Part III: Chapter 10: Predictor Feedback Design When the Delay Is a Function of the State; Chapter 11: Stability Analysis for Forward-Complete Systems with Input Delay; Chapter 12: Stability Analysis for Locally Stabilizable Systems with Input Delay; Chapter 13: Nonlinear Systems with State Delay; Chapter 14: Robustness of Nonlinear Constant-Delay Predictors to Time- and State-Dependent Delay Perturbations; Chapter 15: State-Dependent Delays That Depend on Delayed States; Appendix A: Basic Inequalities; Appendix B: Input-to-Output Stability; Appendix C: Lyapunov Stability, Forward-Completeness, and Input-to-State Stability; Appendix D: Parameter Projection
Deterministic approximation of the cover time

The cover time is the expected time it takes a random walk to cover all vertices of a graph. Despite the fact that it can be approximated with arbitrary precision by a simple polynomial time Monte‐Carlo algorithm which simulates the random walk, it is not known whether the cover time of a graph can be computed in deterministic polynomial time. In the present paper we establish a deterministic polynomial time algorithm that, for any graph and any starting vertex, approximates the cover time within polylogarithmic factors. More generally, our algorithm approximates the cover time for arbitrary reversible Markov chains. The new aspect of our algorithm is that the starting vertex of the random walk may be arbitrary and is given as part of the input, whereas previous deterministic approximation algorithms for the cover time assume that the walk starts at the worst possible vertex. In passing, we show that the starting vertex can make a difference of up to a multiplicative factor of $\Theta(n^{3/2}/\sqrt{\log\, n})$ in the cover time of an n‐vertex graph. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg. , 23: 1–22, 2003
The impact of UK privatization on employment, profits and the distribution of business income

This article examines the effect of privatization on the use of inputs and hence on labour, capital and other supplies in 11 firms which were privatized in the UK in the 1980s. Privatization has been associated with higher productivity and labour does seem to have lost out in terms of income shares, though to a lesser degree in terms of employment and wage relativities. There is no evidence that continued state regulation has caused firms to behave differently from other privatized companies.
MARKETS IN EDUCATION: AN ANALYTICAL REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON MARKET MECHANISMS IN EDUCATION

In the last three decennia, many governments have introduced market mechanisms in education. They have done so by enhancing parental choice and encouraging school competition, through policies like abolishing catchment areas, creating voucher programmes and setting up charter schools. These market mechanisms have given rise to fierce debates in both political and scientific circles. However, most prior reviews of research literature in this area have concluded that the effects of market mechanisms in education are small, if they are found at all. This review tries to answer the question why that is the case, by analysing the causal pathways that link market mechanisms to educational outcomes and by reviewing the empirical evidence for each step along those causal pathways. The findings of this review point to the need for a nuanced and qualified discussion about market mechanisms in education. What market mechanisms mean in actual practice strongly depends on (local) contexts, while the impact of market mechanisms is related to other policies impacting on parental choice behaviour as well as actions taken by schools. Au cours des trois dernieres decennies, de nombreux gouvernements dans le monde entier ont introduit des mecanismes de marche au sein de leur systeme educatif. Ils ont procede ainsi en valorisant le choix des parents d’eleves et en encourageant la competition scolaire a travers des politiques telles que l’abolition des zones scolaires, la creation de programmes accessibles a l’aide de cheques scolaires, et mise en place des ecoles a charte. Ces mecanismes de marche ont donne naissance a des debats passionnes dans les milieux politiques et scientifiques. Cependant, les toutes premieres recherches dans ce secteur ont conclu que les effets des mecanismes de marche dans le secteur educatif sont mineurs, lorsqu’ils sont determines. Cette etude essaie de comprendre pourquoi il en est ainsi en analysant la chaine causale qui lie les mecanismes de marche aux resultats dans le secteur educatif, en passant en revue les donnees empiriques a chaque etape du processus. Les resultats de cette etude soulignent le besoin d’un debat nuance et modere sur les mecanismes de marche dans l’education. Ce que mecanismes de marche signifie en pratique depend fortement du contexte, alors que l’impact des mecanismes de marche est lie a d’autres politiques qui influencent le choix des parents d’eleves ainsi que les actions mises en place dans les ecoles.
Delta Power Control Strategy for Multistring Grid-Connected PV Inverters

With a still increasing penetration level of grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) systems, more advanced active power control functionalities have been introduced in certain grid regulations. A delta power constraint, where a portion of the active power from the PV panels is reserved during operation, is required for grid support (e.g., during frequency deviation). In this paper, a cost-effective solution to realize delta power control (DPC) for grid-connected PV systems is presented, where the multistring PV inverter configuration is adopted. This control strategy is a combination of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and constant power generation (CPG) modes. In this control scheme, one PV string operating in the MPPT mode estimates the available power, whereas the other PV strings regulate the total PV power by the CPG control strategy in such a way that the delta power constraint for the entire PV system is achieved. Simulations and experiments have been performed on a 3-kW single-phase grid-connected PV system. The results have confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed DPC strategy, where the power reserve according to the delta power constraint is achieved under several operating conditions.