Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enabling Junction Temperature Estimation via Collector-Side Thermo-Sensitive Electrical Parameters Through Emitter Stray Inductance in High-Power IGBT Modules

This paper proposes the adoption of the inherent emitter stray inductance <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> $L_{{\rm{eE}}}$</tex-math></inline-formula> in high-power insulated gate bipolar transistor modules as a new dynamic thermo-sensitive electrical parameter (d-TSEP). Furthermore, a family of 14 derived dynamic TSEP candidates has been extracted and classified in voltage-based, time-based and charge-based TSEPs. Accordingly, the perspectives and the implementation challenges of the proposed method are discussed and summarized. Finally, high-power test platforms are designed and adopted to experimentally verify the theoretical analysis.
Unistroke gestures on multi-touch interaction: supporting flexible touches with key stroke extraction

Gesture inputs on multi-touch tabletops usually involve multiple fingers (more than two) and casual touchdowns or liftoffs of fingers. This flexibility of touch gestures allows more natural user interaction, but also poses new challenges for accurate recognition of multi-touch gestures. To address these challenges, we propose a new approach to recognize flexible multi-touch stroke gestures on tabletops. Based on a user study on multi-touch unistroke gestures, we develop a gesture recognition method by extracting key strokes embedded in flexible multi-touch input. Our evaluation study result shows that this method can greatly improve the recognition accuracy of flexible multi-touch unistroke gestures on tabletops.
The nonlinear behaviour of a piezoelectric wafer: constitutive equations and simulation

A piezoelectric wafer has been widely used as a key component of actuators or sensors of a layer type. According to recent research, the piezoelectric wafer behaves in a nonlinear way under excessive electro-mechanical loadings. In the present paper, a simple one-dimensional model for the nonlinear behaviour of a piezoelectric wafer near a poled state is proposed, based on the principles of thermodynamics and a simple viscoplasticity theory. The constitutive model is rate-dependent as well as nonlinear. The predictions of the developed model are compared with experimental observations.
Control Lyapunov function based fixed-time controller design for double-integrator system

Fixed-time control guarantees that the state of a system converges to the origin within a fixed constant time. In this paper, we propose a new robust fixed-time controller design based on control Lyapunov function (CLF). The proposed controller guarantees fixed-time stability and achieves sector margin robustness. The homogeneous CLF in bi-limit is used to design a fixed-time controller. To simplify the discussion, we design a fixed-time controller for the double-integrator system. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is confirmed by computer simulation.
An association between human hippocampal volume and topographical memory in healthy young adults

The association between human hippocampal structure and topographical memory was investigated in healthy adults (N = 30). Structural MR images were acquired, and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to estimate local gray matter volume throughout the brain. A complementary automated mesh-based segmentation approach was used to independently isolate and measure specified structures including the hippocampus. Topographical memory was assessed using a version of the Four Mountains Task, a short test designed to target hippocampal spatial function. Each item requires subjects to briefly study a landscape scene before recognizing the depicted place from a novel viewpoint and under altered non-spatial conditions when presented amongst similar alternative scenes. Positive correlations between topographical memory performance and hippocampal volume were observed in both VBM and segmentation-based analyses. Score on the topographical memory task was also correlated with the volume of some subcortical structures, extra-hippocampal gray matter, and total brain volume, with the most robust and extensive covariation seen in circumscribed neocortical regions in the insula and anterior temporal lobes. Taken together with earlier findings, the results suggest that global variations in brain morphology affect the volume of the hippocampus and its specific contribution to topographical memory. We speculate that behavioral variation might arise directly through the impact of resource constraints on spatial representations in the hippocampal formation and its inputs, and perhaps indirectly through an increased reliance on non-allocentric strategies.
Effect of HIV Infection on Human Papillomavirus Types Causing Invasive Cervical Cancer in Africa

Objectives:HIV infection is known to worsen the outcome of cervical human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and may do so differentially by HPV type. Design:Twenty-one studies were included in a meta-analysis of invasive cervical cancers (ICC) among women infected with HIV in Africa. Method:Type-specific HPV DNA prevalence was compared with data from a similar meta-analysis of HIV-negative ICC using prevalence ratios (PR). Results:HPV detection was similar in 770 HIV-positive (91.2%) and 3846 HIV-negative (89.6%) ICC, but HIV-positive ICC harbored significantly more multiple HPV infections (PR = 1.75, 95% confidence intervals: 1.18 to 2.58), which were significantly more prevalent in ICC tested from cells than from biopsies. HPV16 was the most frequently detected type in HIV-positive ICC (42.5%), followed by HPV18 (22.2%), HPV45 (14.4%), and HPV35 (7.1%). Nevertheless, HIV-positive ICC were significantly less frequently infected with HPV16 than HIV-negative ICC (PR = 0.88, 95% confidence intervals: 0.79 to 0.99). Other high-risk types were significantly more prevalent in HIV-positive ICC, but only for HPV18 was there a significantly higher prevalence of both single and multiple infections in HIV-positive ICC. Increases for other high-risk types were primarily accounted for by multiple infections. The proportion of HPV-positive ICC estimated attributable to HPV16/18 (71.8% in HIV positive, 73.4% in HIV negative) or HPV16/18/31/33/45/52/58 (88.8%, 89.5%) was not affected by HIV. Conclusions:HIV alters the relative carcinogenicity of HPV types, but prophylactic HPV16/18 vaccines may nevertheless prevent a similar proportion of ICC, irrespective of HIV infection.
Effect of florfenicol on performance and microbial community of a sequencing batch biofilm reactor treating mariculture wastewater

ABSTRACT The effects of florfenicol (FF) on the performance, microbial activity and microbial community of a sequencing batch biofilm reactor (SBBR) were evaluated in treating mariculture wastewater. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) and nitrogen removal were inhibited at high FF concentrations. The specific oxygen utilization rate (SOUR), specific ammonium oxidation rate (SAOR), specific nitrite oxidation rate (SNOR) and specific nitrate reduction rate (SNRR) were decreased with an increase in the FF concentration from 0 to 35 mg/L. The chemical compositions of loosely bound extracellular polymeric substances (LB-EPS) and tightly bound EPS (TB-EPS) could be affected with an increase in the FF concentration. The high-throughput sequencing indicated some obvious variations in the microbial community at different FF concentrations. The relative abundance of Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira showed a decreasing tendency with an increase in the FF concentration, suggesting that FF could affect the nitrification process of SBBR. Some genera capable of reducing nitrate to nitrogen gas could be inhibited by the addition of FF in the influent, such as Azospirillum and Hyphomicrobium.
Demonstration of Runtime Model Based Management of Diverse Cloud Resources

Due to the diversity of resources and different personalized management requirements, Cloud management is faced with great challenges in complexity and difficulty. For constructing a management system to satisfy a specific requirement, a redevelopment solution based on existing system is usually more practicable than developing the system from scratch. However, the difficulty and workload of redevelopment are also very high. This paper demonstrates Jade Cloud, which is a runtime model based Cloud management system. Based on the runtime models of OpenStack and Hyperic, Jade Cloud can manage both the infrastructure and software resources in a unified manner. Demo link: https://www.youtube. com/watch? v=o2SiTGL689Q
Variant X-Tree Clock Distribution Network and Its Performance Evaluations

The evolution of VLSI chips towards larger die size, smaller feature size and faster clock speed makes the clock distribution an increasingly important issue. In this paper, we propose a new clock distribution network (CDN), namely Variant X-Tree, based on the idea of X-Architecture proposed recently for efficient wiring within VLSI chips. The Variant X-Tree CDN keeps the nice properties of equal-clock-path and symmetric structure of the typical H-Tree CDN, but results in both a lower maximal clock delay and a lower clock skew than its H-Tree counterpart, as verified by an extensive simulation study that incorporates simultaneously the effects of process variations and on-chip inductance. We also propose a closed-form statistical models for evaluating the skew and delay of the Variant X-Tree CDN. The comparison between the theoretical results and the simulation results indicates that the proposed statistical models can be used to efficiently and rapidly evaluate the performance of the variant X-Tree CDNs.
Image tampering detection using methods based on JPEG compression artifacts: a real-life experiment

In this paper we analyze the synergy between forensic image head data consistency analysis and detection of doubles JPEG compression artifacts. We show that image head consistency testing is an effective method for detecting digital images that have been modified. On the other hand, when it is not combined with other forensic methods such as double JPEG detection, a high number of altered photos remained undetected. The same can also be claimed about double JPEG detection. When employed separately without conjunction with other methods, the majority of altered photos remained undetected. In this paper, a quantitative study on this topic is carried out. We show that combining various image forensic methods is a must.
Spatial-Modulation-Based Wireless-Powered Communication for Achievable Rate Enhancement

In this letter, we propose to utilize spatial modulation (SM) at the wireless device (WD) in a wireless-powered communication (WPC) system for information transmission (IT) by mapping information to the active antenna indices, so that the remaining antennas can be dedicated to energy harvesting (EH) simultaneously. Consequently, the proposed scheme enjoys the advantages of improved system achievable rate (AR), simultaneous EH and IT, and self-energy recycling (SE-R) while requiring no backhaul links between the WD and the information receiver. Numerical results verify the AR enhancement of the proposed scheme with a Gaussian input over the existing time switching-based WPC protocol, the antenna selection-based WPC protocol, and SE-R without SM.
Reflection separation using guided annotation

Photographs taken through a glass surface often contain an approximately linear superposition of reflected and transmitted layers. Decomposing an image into these layers is generally an ill-posed task and the use of an additional image prior and user provided cues is presently necessary in order to obtain good results. Current annotation approaches rely on a strong sparsity assumption. For images with significant texture this assumption does not typically hold, thus rendering the annotation process unviable. In this paper we show that using a Gaussian Mixture Model patch prior, the correct local decomposition can almost always be found as one of 100 likely modes of the posterior. Thus, the user need only choose one of these modes in a sparse set of patches and the decomposition may then be completed automatically. We demonstrate the performance of our method using synthesized and real reflection images.
Face spoofing detection by fusing binocular depth and spatial pyramid coding micro-texture features

Robust features are of vital importance to face spoofing detection, because various situations make feature space extremely complicated to partition. Thus in this paper, two novel and robust features for anti-spoofing are proposed. The first one is a binocular camera based depth feature called Template Face Matched Binocular Depth (TFBD) feature. The second one is a high-level micro-texture based feature called Spatial Pyramid Coding Micro-Texture (SPMT) feature. Novel template face registration algorithm and spatial pyramid coding algorithm are also introduced along with the two novel features. Multi-modal face spoofing detection is implemented based on these two robust features. Experiments are conducted on a widely used dataset and a comprehensive dataset constructed by ourselves. The results reveal that face spoofing detection with the fusion of our proposed features is of strong robustness and time efficiency, meanwhile outperforming other state-of-the-art traditional methods.
A Map/INS/Wi-Fi Integrated System for Indoor Location-Based Service Applications

In this research, a new Map/INS/Wi-Fi integrated system for indoor location-based service (LBS) applications based on a cascaded Particle/Kalman filter framework structure is proposed. Two-dimension indoor map information, together with measurements from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) value, are integrated for estimating positioning information. The main challenge of this research is how to make effective use of various measurements that complement each other in order to obtain an accurate, continuous, and low-cost position solution without increasing the computational burden of the system. Therefore, to eliminate the cumulative drift caused by low-cost IMU sensor errors, the ubiquitous Wi-Fi signal and non-holonomic constraints are rationally used to correct the IMU-derived navigation solution through the extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Moreover, the map-aiding method and map-matching method are innovatively combined to constrain the primary Wi-Fi/IMU-derived position through an Auxiliary Value Particle Filter (AVPF). Different sources of information are incorporated through a cascaded structure EKF/AVPF filter algorithm. Indoor tests show that the proposed method can effectively reduce the accumulation of positioning errors of a stand-alone Inertial Navigation System (INS), and provide a stable, continuous and reliable indoor location service.
The ciliary protein RPGRIP1L governs autophagy independently of its proteasome-regulating function at the ciliary base in mouse embryonic fibroblasts

ABSTRACT Previously, macroautophagy/autophagy was demonstrated to be regulated inter alia by the primary cilium. Mutations in RPGRIP1L cause ciliary dysfunctions resulting in severe human diseases summarized as ciliopathies. Recently, we showed that RPGRIP1L deficiency leads to a decreased proteasomal activity at the ciliary base in mice. Importantly, the drug-induced restoration of proteasomal activity does not rescue ciliary length alterations in the absence of RPGRIP1L indicating that RPGRIP1L affects ciliary function also via other mechanisms. Based on this knowledge, we analyzed autophagy in Rpgrip1l-negative mouse embryos. In these embryos, autophagic activity was decreased due to an increased activation of the MTOR complex 1 (MTORC1). Application of the MTORC1 inhibitor rapamycin rescued dysregulated MTORC1, autophagic activity and cilia length but not proteasomal activity in Rpgrip1l-deficient mouse embryonic fibroblasts demonstrating that RPGRIP1L seems to regulate autophagic and proteasomal activity independently from each other.
Monitoring of long steel pipes using acoustic emission

This thesis relates to the condition monitoring of long steel pipes using acoustic emission (AE). A number of experiments were carried out on pipes with a range of internal and external environments using a linear axial array of sensors with the ultimate aim of locating and reconstituting the time-domain and frequency-domain signatures of AE sources. The AE waves were generated from simulated, discontinuous, continuous, and semi-continuous sources and from real sources generated by impacts and crack propagation. The simulated source work in different internal and external environments was carried out to develop a generic empirical approach to AE propagation in long steel pipes which acknowledges the distortion of a source disturbance in the time and frequency domains. Generally, the acquired signals have two identifiable components and methods are developed for separating these components automatically and determining their group velocities. A simple model for attenuation is also developed which includes effects brought about by burial of the pipe and /or the nature of the fluid transported (liquid or gas). In the impact and crack extension tests a variety of intensities were simulated and the effect of type and intensity on timeand frequency-domain characteristics of the source was determined. The overall outcome is the demonstration of the potential of AE for identifying the nature, intensity and location of damaging events, such as crack growth and denting, and for the location and intensity assessment of leaks.
Iron regulates glucose homeostasis in liver and muscle via AMP‐activated protein kinase in mice

Excess iron is associated with hepatic damage and diabetes in humans, although the detailed molecular mechanisms are not known. To investigate how iron regulates glucose homeostasis, we fed C57BL/6J male mice with high‐iron (HI) diets (2 or 20 g Fe/kg chow). Mice fed an HI diet exhibited elevated AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity and impaired insulin signaling in skeletal muscle and liver. Consistent with the increased AMPK activity, glucose uptake was enhanced in mice fed an HI diet. The effects of improved glucose tolerance induced by HI feeding were abolished in transgenic mice with expression of muscle specific dominant‐negative AMPK. Glucose output was suppressed in the liver of wild‐type mice fed an HI diet, due to decreased expression of gluconeogenic genes and decreased substrate (lactate) from peripheral glycolysis. Iron activated AMPK by increasing deacetylase and decreasing LKB1 acetylation, in turn stimulating the phosphorylation of LKB1 and AMPK. The effects of HI diet were abrogated by treatment of the mice with N‐acetyl cysteine, suggesting a redox‐dependent mechanism for increasing deacetylase activity. In addition, tissue from iron‐fed mice exhibited an elevated AMP/ATP ratio, further contributing to AMPK activation. In summary, a diet high in iron improves glucose tolerance by activating AMPK through mechanisms that include deacetylation. — Huang J., Simcox, J., Mitchell, T. C. , Jones, D. , Cox, J., Luo, B. , Cooksey, R. C. , Boros, L. G. , McClain, D. A. Iron regulates glucose homeostasis in liver and muscle via AMP‐activated protein kinase in mice. FASEB J. 27, 2845–2854 (2013). www.fasebj. org
Traffic information collection system based on crowdsourcing and related privacy issues

With the rapid development of wireless network technology, intelligent transport system is more familiar to people, while affecting people's lifestyles. At present, the crowdsourcing idea has been applied to the research about the intelligent transport system. But the application style is relatively simple, and the problems involved is not considered. This paper proposes a traffic information collection system based on crowdsourcing and proposes a clustering uploading algorithm to solve workers' privacy security problem. It is shown by simulation that this algorithm can effectively protect the workers' privacy security problem, reducing the probability of privacy leak. And the method provided can also be applied to other similar information collection system.
Measuring the Masses of Neutron Stars

Until a few years ago the common understanding was that neutron stars, the compact remnants of massive stars, have a canonical mass of about 1.4 MA. Recent observations with VLT/UVES support the view that the neutron stars in high-mass X-ray binaries display a relatively large spread in mass, ranging from the theoretical lower mass limit of 1 MA up to over 2 MA. Such a mass distribution provides important information on the formation mechanism of neutron stars (i.e. the supernovae), and on the (unknown) behaviour of matter at supranuclear densities.
Stac proteins associate with the critical domain for excitation–contraction coupling in the II–III loop of CaV1.1

In skeletal muscle, residues 720–764/5 within the CaV1.1 II–III loop form a critical domain that plays an essential role in transmitting the excitation–contraction (EC) coupling Ca2+ release signal to the type 1 ryanodine receptor (RyR1) in the sarcoplasmic reticulum. However, the identities of proteins that interact with the loop and its critical domain and the mechanism by which the II–III loop regulates RyR1 gating remain unknown. Recent work has shown that EC coupling in skeletal muscle of fish and mice depends on the presence of Stac3, an adaptor protein that is highly expressed only in skeletal muscle. Here, by using colocalization as an indicator of molecular interactions, we show that Stac3, as well as Stac1 and Stac2 (predominantly neuronal Stac isoforms), interact with the II–III loop of CaV1.1. Further, we find that these Stac proteins promote the functional expression of CaV1.1 in tsA201 cells and support EC coupling in Stac3-null myotubes and that Stac3 is the most effective. Coexpression in tsA201 cells reveals that Stac3 interacts only with II–III loop constructs containing the majority of the CaV1.1 critical domain residues. By coexpressing Stac3 in dysgenic (CaV1.1-null) myotubes together with CaV1 constructs whose chimeric II–III loops had previously been tested for functionality, we reveal that the ability of Stac3 to interact with them parallels the ability of these constructs to mediate skeletal type EC coupling. Based on coexpression in tsA201 cells, the interaction of Stac3 with the II–III loop critical domain does not require the presence of the PKC C1 domain in Stac3, but it does require the first of the two SH3 domains. Collectively, our results indicate that activation of RyR1 Ca2+ release by CaV1.1 depends on Stac3 being bound to critical domain residues in the II–III loop.