Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
RT-level vector selection for realistic peak power simulation

We present a vector selection methodology for estimating the peak power dissipation in a CMOS logic circuit. The ultimate goal is to combine the speed of RT-level simulation with the accuracy of low-level power simulation. We rely on efficient RT-level peak power prediction heuristics to select a handful of input vector pairs from the simulation testbench. These vector pairs are highly likely to induce the worst-case peak power. After that, the low-level power simulation is performed only with these peak power candidate vector pairs to obtain the realistic peak power values. Computationally, there are three major stages in our methodology. Firstly, we analyze the structure of the circuit and calculate the peak power weight for each input pin so as to construct a so-called mountain-based model. Secondly, we perform waveform composition to compute the peak power metric for each given input vector pair. Finally, we select a few candidate vectors for low-level power simulation. By doing so, the time-consuming simulation at the low levels can be mostly avoided without losing accuracy. Experiment results show that only less than 1% of the total functional patterns defined in a testbench are needed to be selected for low-level power simulation in order to catch the worst-case peak power vector pair.
Theories of Economic Regulation

A major challenge to social theory is to explain the pattern of government intervention in the market - what we may call "economic regulation. " Properly defined, the term refers to taxes and subsidies of all sorts as well as to explicit legislative and administrative controls over rates, entry, and other facets of economic activity. Two main theories of economic regulation have been proposed. One is the "public interest" theory, bequeathed by a previous generation of economists to the present generation of lawyers. This theory holds that regulation is supplied in response to the demand of the public for the correction of inefficient or inequitable market practices. It has a number of deficiencies that we shall discuss. The second theory is the "capture" theory - a poor term but one that will do for now. Espoused by an odd mixture of welfare state liberals, Marxists, and free-market economists, this theory holds that regulation is supplied in response to the demands of interest groups struggling among themselves to maximize the incomes of their members. There are crucial differences among the capture theorists. I will argue that the economists' version of the "capture" theory is the most promising but shall also point out the significant weaknesses in both the theory and the empirical research that is alleged to support it.
A Boiler Flame Detecting System Based on TMS320DM642

The safety and efficiency of boiler operation are always determined by the combustion stability of boiler in power plants. In order to acquire the flame states precisely from the boiler in real time, a new boiler flame detecting system based on TMS320DM642 (DM642) is designed, and this paper focuses on the hardware design, the algorithm design based on Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), as well as the system integration. The detecting system is tested with flame image data retrieved from a burner in a power plant in southeast China, and the results indicate the advantage of efficiency, real time and stability of this system.
The Effect of Leflunomide on Cycling and Activation of T-Cells in HIV-1-Infected Participants

Background The pathogenesis of immunodeficiency due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 is incompletely understood, but immune activation is believed to play a central role. Immunomodulatory agents that decrease immune activation may be useful in the treatment of HIV-1 infection. Methodology A randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled pilot study of leflunomide for 28 days was performed in participants with HIV-1 infection who were not receiving antiretroviral therapy. Participants randomized to leflunomide were subsequently treated with cholestyramine until leflunomide levels were below detection limit. Findings Treatment with leflunomide was well tolerated with mostly low-grade adverse events. Leflunomide administration reduced cycling of CD4 T cells (by ex vivo bromodeoxyuridine uptake and Ki67 expression) and decreased expression of activation markers (HLA-DR/CD38 co-expression) on CD8 T cells in peripheral blood. In addition, decreased expression of HIV-1 co-receptors was observed in both CD4 and CD8 T cells in the leflunomide group. There were no significant changes in naïve and memory T cell subsets, apoptosis of T cells or markers of microbial translocation. Conclusions Leflunomide was effective in reducing immune activation in the setting of chronic HIV-1 infection suggesting that targeting immune activation with immunomodulatory agents may be a feasible strategy. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00101374
Preliminary Study of Circularly Split Ring Resonators Entrenched within Circular Microstrip Antenna

112902-8383 IJET-IJENS @ April 2011 IJENS I J E N S Abstract— In this paper, influence of Circularly Split Ring Resonators with its accompanying circular microstrip patch antenna are investigated. Proposing a 5850 to 7075 MHz band of working frequency, by means of microwave laminate RT/D 5880 (εr = 2.2 and thickness of 1.82 mm). The antenna is wholly organized into three layers consisting of circular copper sheet as ground plane, an undersized main radiator for where signal will pass through to resonate and ended with designed split rings entrenched on layer three laminate. All layers are separated by an air gap, simulated and optimized carefully using Microwave Studio of Computer Simulation Technology Suite (CST). Provided that, dimension of air gap, split ring quantity and entrenched split ring width are monitored as key controllers. Via transient solver, it presents corresponding S-parameter results and provides 3D view farfield. Thus demonstrating how each key controllers influence the antenna in terms of bandwidth, directivity, gain and efficiency produced. These works conclude that adaptation of split rings can enhance and improve this particular antenna.
High performance eventually consistent distributed database Zatara

With the proliferation of the computer cloud, new software delivery methods have been created. In order to build software to fit into one of these models, a scalable, easy to deploy storage tier is required. Distributed, non-SQL databases use multiple techniques to distribute information, guarantee data consistency and growth. Unfortunately, most developments were designed with a single class of applications in mind, which means that they bring many constraints for developers. Our approach involves a plug-in-able distributed database engine that abstracts interfaces with clients and data structures stored. The prototype, called Zatara, is tested on an Amazon EC2 infrastructure with 196 nodes. In this environment it is able to deliver more than 20 million transactions per second, scaling almost linearly with the number of nodes. From the performance point of view, these results demonstrate our initial assumptions that it is not necessary to expose a particular data structure in order for the database to scale. From the software developers' point of view, this approach simplifies migrations from SQL databases.
Information-Retrieval-as-a-Service for the Web of Things: A Survey and a Proposal of IRaaS Architecture

The Cloud age, characterized by a revolution of Data center infrastructures with powerful resources, has leveraged the "as-a-service" paradigms. Nowadays, the Web of Things (WoT) proposes the abstraction of real world entities in a virtual Web avatar, to acquire, process and present real-time information with the ability to connect with the real-world, and to control real things. A new generation of services can arise from these complementary paradigms. One of them is crucial for a daily basis interaction with this new smart world, Information Retrieval (IR), mostly in the form of search engines can also evolve into more powerful tools. Based on that, a new architecture of this kind of services has to be defined by the synergy and challenges that WoT imposes. We propose an IR as a service IRaaS architecture for the new era of the Web of Things. It considers the high dynamics in WoT which leverages a significant amount of changes in the IR collection to merge efficiently conventional IR concepts and the cloud power. Our IRaaS approach takes into account the big-data characteristics of WoT concerning velocity, volume, volatility, and the variety of data. The architecture has two main pillars: the indexing and analysis block, and the querying and retrieval block. We propose building it driven in three dimensions: search scope, resources, and data type. From these perspectives, we show and compare the related works and researches.
A heuristic algorithm for the fanout problem

An algorithm is presented to optimally distribute a signal to its required destinations. The choice of the buffers and the topology of the distribution tree depends on the availability of different strength gates and on the load and the required times at the destination. Since the area-constrained fanout problem is NP-complete and area is not a major consideration in present high-density designs, attention is restricted to the simpler problem of designing fast fanout circuits without any area constraint. The proposed algorithm builds the fanout tree by partitioning the fanout signals into subsets and then recursively solving each subproblem. At each stage the algorithm generates a fanout tree that is an improvement over the previous stage. This feature allows the user to specify the improvement desired by the fanout correction process. The performance of the algorithm, when run on randomly generated distributions of required times and on real design examples, is very promising. <<ETX>>
The role of inheritance in the maintainability of object-oriented systems

In this paper, we describe the empirical evaluation of the level of inheritance in five object-oriented systems. The systems studied vary in both size and application domain. Results from our analysis together with other recent investigations seem to support the thesis that inheritance is used either sparingly or incorrectly. Statistical correlation between four inheritance metrics and a set of dependent variables (non-comment source lines, software understandability, known errors and error density) provide evidence for this claim. It is also not clear that systems using inheritance will necessarily be more maintainable than those that do not. The data analysed from two of our systems suggests that deeper inheritance trees are attributes of systems which are harder to understand and (by implication) harder to maintain. We analyse why this might be the case, and propose ways of remedying this situation.
Detrimental effects of introducing partial compulsory vaccination: experimental evidence.

BACKGROUND During outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, compulsory vaccination is sometimes discussed as a last resort to counter vaccine refusal. Besides ethical arguments, however, empirical evidence on the consequences of making selected vaccinations compulsory is lacking. Such evidence is needed to make informed public health decisions. This study therefore assesses the effect of partial compulsory vaccination on the uptake of other voluntary vaccines. METHOD A total of 297 (N) participants took part in an online experiment that simulated two sequential vaccination decisions using an incentivized behavioural vaccination game. The game framework bases on epidemiological, psychological and game-theoretical models of vaccination. Participants were randomized to the compulsory vaccination intervention (n = 144) or voluntary vaccination control group (n = 153), which determined the decision architecture of the first of two decisions. The critical second decision was voluntary for all participants. We also assessed the level of anger, vaccination attitude and perceived severity of the two diseases. RESULTS Compulsory vaccination increased the level of anger among individuals with a rather negative vaccination attitude, whereas voluntary vaccination did not. This led to a decrease in vaccination uptake by 39% in the second voluntary vaccination (reactance). CONCLUSION Making only selected vaccinations compulsory can have detrimental effects on the vaccination programme by decreasing the uptake of voluntary vaccinations. As this effect occurred especially for vaccine hesitant participants, the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy within a society will influence the damage of partial compulsory vaccination.
AN APPROACH FOR BROADER RANGE OF SECURITY IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing is one of the today’s most exciting technologies due to its abilities like ensuring scalable services, reducing the burden of local hardware and software management associated with computing while increasing flexibility and scalability. A major feature of the cloud services is that user’s data are usually processed remotely in unknown machines. Though there are many conveniences brought by this new technology, there are some issues such as cloud computing servers can be easily compromised, data is no longer under the control of the data owner and cloud computing is not responsible for the access control of outsourced data desired by the data owner. To address these problems, we propose a new framework known as Secure Flexible Framework (SFF). This proposed framework allows data owner to achieve cloud data integrity, actual data usage tracking and fine grained access control of outsourced data. Through this paper, we strengthen the correctness and user’s control of their own data in the cloud along with scalable, flexible and fine grained access control of outsourced data.
A general ranking strategy for data accuracy management

A series of recent studies proposed a construct named damage and a set of models for estimating the damage in a chosen class of information systems. The perception that underlies the proposed construct is that, all other things being equal, it would be beneficial to assign priority to the elimination of data errors that have a stronger negative effect on output accuracy (i.e., output accuracy is lower) over data errors that have a weaker effect. In this paper we extend the work on damage by considering its use with information systems in general, rather than a specific class of information systems. Mainly, we propose a general strategy for ranking the inputs according to the damage that errors in each input inflict on the output of the system. A major advantage of this strategy is that it focuses the ranking effort on a subcomponent of the information system that can be substantially smaller and simpler than the information system as a whole.
The mixed embeddedness of transnational migrant entrepreneurs: Moroccans in Amsterdam and Milan

ABSTRACT This article addresses transnational migrant entrepreneurship – migrant entrepreneurs establishing businesses that span across borders. The article contributes to this field by applying the mixed embeddedness approach and revisiting it from a transnational perspective. The article uses an overall qualitative approach and analyses the case of Moroccan transnational entrepreneurs in Milan and Amsterdam (N = 35). This illustrates that, on the one hand, institutional embeddedness in different contexts (country of residence, country of origin, and other countries) influences respondents’ business patterns through the opportunities and the constraints created by the political-institutional and economic features of these contexts. On the other hand, transnational entrepreneurs take advantage of their (often, previously-acquired) heterogeneous contacts (social embeddedness) and skills (e.g. linguistic knowledge, previous work experience) to conduct their business.
Photolysis of a caged peptide reveals rapid action of N-ethylmaleimide sensitive factor before neurotransmitter release

The time at which the N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor (NSF) acts during synaptic vesicle (SV) trafficking was identified by time-controlled perturbation of NSF function with a photoactivatable inhibitory peptide. Photolysis of this caged peptide in the squid giant presynaptic terminal caused an abrupt (0.2 s) slowing of the kinetics of the postsynaptic current (PSC) and a more gradual (2–3 s) reduction in PSC amplitude. Based on the rapid rate of these inhibitory effects relative to the speed of SV recycling, we conclude that NSF functions in reactions that immediately precede neurotransmitter release. Our results indicate the locus of SNARE protein recycling in presynaptic terminals and reveal NSF as a potential target for rapid regulation of transmitter release.
Magnus : Peer to Peer Backup System

Magnus is a peer-to-peer backup system for reliable and persistent data store using surplus resources. Magnus achieves its reliability and minimizes storage by using Erasure Coding to distribute fragments to different peers for backup. Decoding the fragments takes negligible time compared to retrieving data over the network and writing data to disk for recovery. Additionally, monitoring online status of peers ensures reliability by shifting fragments stored in offline hosts.
On User-Interaction in 3D Reconstruction

For many computer graphics tasks such as segmentation, tracking or retargeting, algorithms are designed to allow user interaction. For real-world applications, tools which give users some form of control are often preferred over fully automatic ones. In 3D reconstruction, however, algorithms are typically non-interactive and errors are corrected after reconstruction in generic 3D modeling software. In this contribution, we discuss fundamental algorithmic considerations regarding interactivity in 3D reconstruction and we outline an optimization-based reconstruction framework which allows the incorporation of interactive tools as energy terms.
Varicella vaccine exposure during pregnancy: data from 10 Years of the pregnancy registry.

BACKGROUND The Pregnancy Registry for Varivax (Merck) was established to monitor for congenital varicella syndrome or other birth defects in the offspring of women who were exposed to varicella vaccine while pregnant. METHODS The registry receives voluntary reports from health care providers or consumers about women given the vaccine 3 months before or during pregnancy. Follow-up is conducted to obtain and classify pregnancy outcomes. All reports are evaluated for the presence of birth defects. Outcomes from prospectively reported pregnancy exposures are used to calculate rates and 95% confidence intervals. RESULTS From 17 March 1995 through 16 March 2005, 981 women were enrolled. Pregnancy outcomes were available for 629 prospectively enrolled women. Among the 131 live births to varicella-zoster virus-seronegative women, there was no evidence of congenital varicella syndrome (rate, 0% [95% confidence interval [CI], 0%-6.7%]), and major birth defects were observed in 3 infants (rate, 3.7% [95% CI, 0.8%-10.7%]). CONCLUSIONS Although the numbers of exposures are not sufficient to rule out a very low risk, data collected in the pregnancy registry to date do not support a relationship between the occurrence of congenital varicella syndrome or other birth defects and varicella vaccine exposure during pregnancy.
Preface to: China's Science and Technology Sector and the Forces of Globalization

China’s booming economy has drawn both admiration and fear from the rest of the world. With its ability to churn out high-quality goods at low prices, China has become known as the “factory of the world”. To better understand China’s development and modernisation since the 1978 reforms, it is necessary to analyse its policies on importing technologies and developing indigenous ones.The articles in this volume paint a comprehensive picture of the attempts by the Chinese government to adopt and foster science and technology, the successes of the policies and the continuing challenges.
Se p 20 02 Non-uniform Mixing in Continuous Quantum Walks

In this note, we study the mixing properties of continuous-time quantum random walks on graphs. We prove that the only graphs in the family of balanced complete multipartite graphs that have a uniform mixing property are K2, K3, K4, and K2,2. This is unlike the classical case where the uniform mixing property is satisfied by all such graphs. Our proof exploits the circulant structure of these graphs.
Conversion of Zonulae Occludentes from Tight to Leaky Strand Type by Introducing Claudin-2 into Madin-Darby Canine Kidney I Cells

There are two strains of MDCK cells, MDCK I and II. MDCK I cells show much higher transepithelial electric resistance (TER) than MDCK II cells, although they bear similar numbers of tight junction (TJ) strands. We examined the expression pattern of claudins, the major components of TJ strands, in these cells: claudin-1 and -4 were expressed both in MDCK I and II cells, whereas the expression of claudin-2 was restricted to MDCK II cells. The dog claudin-2 cDNA was then introduced into MDCK I cells to mimic the claudin expression pattern of MDCK II cells. Interestingly, the TER values of MDCK I clones stably expressing claudin-2 (dCL2-MDCK I) fell to the levels of MDCK II cells (>20-fold decrease). In contrast, when dog claudin-3 was introduced into MDCK I cells, no change was detected in their TER. Similar results were obtained in mouse epithelial cells, Eph4. Morphometric analyses identified no significant differences in the density of TJs or in the number of TJ strands between dCL2-MDCK I and control MDCK I cells. These findings indicated that the addition of claudin-2 markedly decreased the tightness of individual claudin-1/4–based TJ strands, leading to the speculation that the combination and mixing ratios of claudin species determine the barrier properties of individual TJ strands.
Mind, Brain, and Relationships

The Interpersonal Neurobiology Perspective T he " mind " is rarely defined in fields that focus on mental experience. This avoidance may be due to any of several well-considered reasons. There is the understandable philosophical stance that definitions may restrict a full understanding, or the notion that the mystery of the mind makes us unable to characterize its defining features. Sometimes the word " mind " is used as a placeholder for the unknown, a marker of this mysterious source of our sub­ jective inner life. In this book, I honor these positions while taking the risky step of exploring a working definition of the mind that has been of great value in understanding how our lives develop and what a healthy mind may actually be. After all, if we do not attempt to define at least a core aspect of the mind itself, how can we state what might constitute a healthy mind? This book explores how recent findings from a range of sciences can bring us to a new understanding of the developing mind. The sciences give us many views of how the mind functions, providing in-depth but distinct perspectives on human experience. For example, neuroscience can inform us about how the brain gives rise to mental processes such as memory and per­ ception. Developmental psychology offers us a view of how children's minds grow within families across time. Anthropology gives us insights into how relational experiences and communication patterns within different cultures directly shape the development of the mind. Psychiatry gives us a clinical view of how individuals may suffer from emotional and behavioral distur­ bances that profoundly alter the course of their lives. Often these disciplines function in isolation from one another. Yet when one attempts to synthesize their recent findings, an incredible convergence of many independent fields of study is revealed. This convergence can be called " consilience " —the dis­ covery of common findings from independent disciplines. 1 These findings shed light on how the mind emerges from the substance of the brain and is