Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ambient energy harvesting nonvolatile processors: From circuit to system

Energy harvesting is gaining more and more attentions due to its characteristics of ultra-long operation time without maintenance. However, frequent unpredictable power failures from energy harvesters bring performance and reliability challenges to traditional processors. Nonvolatile processors are promising to solve such a problem due to their advantage of zero leakage and efficient backup and restore operations. To optimize the nonvolatile processor design, this paper proposes new metrics of nonvolatile processors to consider energy harvesting factors for the first time. Furthermore, we explore the nonvolatile processor design from circuit to system level. A prototype of energy harvesting nonvolatile processor is set up and experimental results show that the proposed performance metric meets the measured results by less than 6.27% average errors. Finally, the energy consumption of nonvolatile processor is analyzed under different benchmarks.
The Adaptive Fractional Order Differential Model for Image Enhancement Based on Segmentation

For image enhancement method based on the fractional order differential, it is difficult to artificially give the optimal order of the fractional differential which can make the image enhancement effect better, and it is hard to ensure the enhancement of the target object while preserving the information of background pixels if the entire image is filtered by a fixed differential order. In order to solve this problem, the image is segmented into the object area and the background area according to the Otsu threshold algorithm based on Markov Random Field firstly. On the basis of the principle of the fractional differential for image enhancement, a piecewise function is established by combining with the different characteristics of pixels in each area, then the best order of fractional differential in the two areas can be determined adaptively. Thus, a novel adaptive fractional order differential algorithm for image enhancement on the basis of segmentation is put forward. Several fog-degraded traffic images are selected for experiments and processed by three other algorithms. The results of comparison exhibit the superiority of our algorithm.
X‐Chromosome Genetic Association Test Accounting for X‐Inactivation, Skewed X‐Inactivation, and Escape from X‐Inactivation

X‐chromosome inactivation (XCI) is the process in which one of the two copies of the X‐chromosome in females is randomly inactivated to achieve the dosage compensation of X‐linked genes between males and females. That is, 50% of the cells have one allele inactive and the other 50% of the cells have the other allele inactive. However, studies have shown that skewed or nonrandom XCI is a biological plausibility wherein more than 75% of cells have the same allele inactive. Also, some of the X‐chromosome genes escape XCI, i.e., both alleles are active in all cells. Current statistical tests for X‐chromosome association studies can either account for random XCI (e.g., Clayton's approach) or escape from XCI (e.g., PLINK software). Because the true XCI process is unknown and differs across different regions on the X‐chromosome, we proposed a unified approach of maximizing likelihood ratio over all biological possibilities: random XCI, skewed XCI, and escape from XCI. A permutation‐based procedure was developed to assess the significance of the approach. We conducted simulation studies to compare the performance of the proposed approach with Clayton's approach and PLINK regression. The results showed that the proposed approach has higher powers in the scenarios where XCI is skewed while losing some power in scenarios where XCI is random or XCI is escaped, with well‐controlled type I errors. We also applied the approach to the X‐chromosomal genetic association study of head and neck cancer.
The tower of K‐theory of truncated polynomial algebras

Let A be a regular noetherian Fp‐algebra. The relative K‐groups Kq(A[x]/(xm),(x)) and the Nil‐groups Nilq(A[x]/(xm)) were evaluated by the author and Ib Madsen in terms of the big de Rham–Witt groups WrΩAq of the ring A. In this paper, we evaluate the maps of relative K‐groups and Nil‐groups induced by the canonical projection f: A[x]/(xm) → A[x]/(xn). The result depends strongly on the prime p. It generalizes earlier work by Stienstra on the groups in degrees 2 and 3.
Biofilters in San Diego County: A Descriptive Analysis of Their Stormwater Management Implications, the Water Regime’s Role and the Way Forward

Author(s): Aguirre, Paloma | Abstract: As San Diego County continues to grow, so do the challenges to address stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff can have significant impacts to coastal and marine ecosystems and the need to reduce water consumption and reuse gray water has never been as important as in our current situation. Stormwater is treated through a combination of biogeochemical processes, microbial, vegetative and organic uptake and filtration through a mixed or single media filter. Biofilters are a combination of a media filter, underground retention basin, and a small community of plants on top and other cover such as mulch or rocks. These elements are intended to prevent pollution elements such as solid waste, pathogens, sediments, chemicals and metals from entering waterways and minimizing impacts to bodies of water intended for beneficial uses. The goal of this study is to conduct an in-depth policy and management analysis of biofilters in San Diego County. This assessment will examine their implications in stormwater management, the water regime’s role and recommendations on what specific type of biofilter is the most suited for southern California’s projected global warming-related changes in weather patterns.
Structural insights into diversity and n-alkane biodegradation mechanisms of alkane hydroxylases

Environmental microbes utilize four degradation pathways for the oxidation of n-alkanes. Although the enzymes degrading n-alkanes in different microbes may vary, enzymes functioning in the first step in the aerobic degradation of alkanes all belong to the alkane hydroxylases. Alkane hydroxylases are a class of enzymes that insert oxygen atoms derived from molecular oxygen into different sites of the alkane terminus (or termini) depending on the type of enzymes. In this review, we summarize the different types of alkane hydroxylases, their degrading steps, and compare typical enzymes from various classes with regard to their three-dimensional structures, in order to provide insights into how the enzymes mediate their different roles in the degradation of n-alkanes and what determines their different substrate ranges. Through the above analyzes, the degrading mechanisms of enzymes can be elucidated and molecular biological methods can be utilized to expand their catalytic roles in the petrochemical industry or in bioremediation of oil-contaminated environments.
UniSpacer arthroplasty of the knee.

BACKGROUND The operative treatment of medial compartment knee arthritis is controversial. The purpose of the present study was to report the experience of a single surgeon with the UniSpacer arthroplasty for the treatment of isolated medial compartment arthritis of the knee. METHODS From April 2002 through November 2002, thirty-seven UniSpacer arthroplasties were performed in thirty-four patients for the treatment of arthritis that primarily involved the medial compartment of the knee. The Ahlbäck radiographic evaluation scale was used to grade the severity of arthritis; the mean preoperative score was 2.6 points for the medial compartment and 0.5 point for both the lateral and patellofemoral compartments. The study group included eighteen women (nineteen knees) and sixteen men (eighteen knees) who had a mean age of fifty-five years (range, forty-two to seventy-five years) at the time of surgery. Twelve patients had had a previous arthroscopic meniscectomy. The mean preoperative Knee Society function score was 60 points (range, 40 to 80 points), and the mean preoperative Knee Society objective score was 62 points (range, 40 to 76 points). RESULTS After a mean duration of follow-up of twenty-six months (range, twenty-four to twenty-nine months), there were no excellent, ten good, fifteen fair, and twelve poor results. The mean postoperative total function score was 69 points (range, 40 to 82 points), and the mean Knee Society objective score was 72 points (range, 45 to 88 points). Six of the twelve poor results were in knees that had dislocation of the UniSpacer. All twelve knees were revised to a total knee arthroplasty. CONCLUSIONS On the basis of this experience, we do not recommend UniSpacer arthroplasty for the treatment of degenerative arthritis of the medial compartment of the knee.
Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter–Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set

The transition from hunting and gathering to farming involved a major cultural innovation that has spread rapidly over most of the globe in the last ten millennia. In sub-Saharan Africa, hunter–gatherers have begun to shift toward an agriculture-based lifestyle over the last 5,000 years. Only a few populations still base their mode of subsistence on hunting and gathering. The Pygmies are considered to be the largest group of mobile hunter–gatherers of Africa. They dwell in equatorial rainforests and are characterized by their short mean stature. However, little is known about the chronology of the demographic events—size changes, population splits, and gene flow—ultimately giving rise to contemporary Pygmy (Western and Eastern) groups and neighboring agricultural populations. We studied the branching history of Pygmy hunter–gatherers and agricultural populations from Africa and estimated separation times and gene flow between these populations. We resequenced 24 independent noncoding regions across the genome, corresponding to a total of ∼33 kb per individual, in 236 samples from seven Pygmy and five agricultural populations dispersed over the African continent. We used simulation-based inference to identify the historical model best fitting our data. The model identified included the early divergence of the ancestors of Pygmy hunter–gatherers and farming populations ∼60,000 years ago, followed by a split of the Pygmies' ancestors into the Western and Eastern Pygmy groups ∼20,000 years ago. Our findings increase knowledge of the history of the peopling of the African continent in a region lacking archaeological data. An appreciation of the demographic and adaptive history of African populations with different modes of subsistence should improve our understanding of the influence of human lifestyles on genome diversity.
Controlling Redundancy in Referring Expressions

Krahmer et al.s (2003) graph-based framework provides an elegant and flexible approach to the generation of referring expressions. In this paper, we present the first reported study that systematically investigates how to tune the parameters of the graph-based framework on the basis of a corpus of human-generated descriptions. We focus in particular on replicating the redundant nature of human referring expressions, whereby properties not strictly necessary for identifying a referent are nonetheless included in descriptions. We show how statistics derived from the corpus data can be integrated to boost the frameworks performance over a non-stochastic baseline.
Quality Classifiers for Open Source Software Repositories

Open Source Software (OSS) often relies on large repositories, like SourceForge, for initial incubation. The OSS repositories offer a large variety of meta-data providing interesting information about projects and their success. In this paper we propose a data mining approach for training classifiers on the OSS meta-data provided by such data repositories. The classifiers learn to predict the successful continuation of an OSS project. The `successfulness' of projects is defined in terms of the classifier confidence with which it predicts that they could be ported in popular OSS projects (such as FreeBSD, Gentoo Portage).
Distributed dynamic scheduling in wireless ad hoc networks with spatial randomness

It is well known that opportunistic scheduling and routing can be significantly leveraged in wireless ad hoc networks to improve the reliability of communication. However, complex opportunistic schemes incur a large overhead in terms of required channel state information leading to an overall degradation of the effective throughput. In this paper, we propose a distributed dynamic scheduling (DDS) scheme that has very little overhead and is easy to implement. DDS schedules a transmission by comparing the quality of the channel between a transmitter and its associated receiver to a dynamic threshold. We show that it is critical to choose the threshold as a function of the intensity of network transmissions and we quantify the gain using the transmission capacity (TC) framework. Our main results show that DDS can significantly increase the TC. In addition, we also show that the outage probability of DDS can be further reduced by using a geometry-based interference cancellation approach, which provides a fundamental view of how much outage probability can be improved by receivers.
Evaluation of strategies for control and prevention of pandemic influenza (H1N1pdm) in Japanese children attending school in a rural town. Simulation using mathematical models.

OBJECTIVES In 2009, epidemics of influenza (H1N1pdm) occurred worldwide. We evaluated 4 strategies for control and prevention of influenza (treatment with antiviral drugs, preventive actions, cancellation of large events, and school closures) by surveying the H1N1pdm epidemic in a geographically isolated rural town in Japan, and applying the epidemic to mathematical models. METHODS Subjects were 291 children attending nursery, primary, and junior high schools in Kounu town. The 4 strategies were evaluated by 3 types of mathematical models with varying parameters. RESULTS The total number of infected cases, as reported in questionnaires, was 120. In the best-fitting model, treatment with antiviral drugs shortened the epidemic period from 31 to 23 days. Event cancellation reduced the total number of infected cases from 127.1 to 87.6 and the maximum number of cases from 63.7 to 41.7. In this simulation, 56 people were affected by the intervention. Immediate school closure reduced the total and maximum numbers of infected cases to 62.6 and 23.1, respectively. CONCLUSION Statistical analysis confirmed that event cancellation and school closure are effective strategies for control of an influenza epidemic. The effective contact rate varied, which reflects a localized and rapidly spreading epidemic in a subpopulation.
Perinatal Maternal Fat Intake Affects Metabolism and Hippocampal Function in the Offspring

Both undernutrition and overnutrition of the mother during pregnancy and lactation produce a syndrome of altered energy balance in the offspring and has long‐lasting consequences on CNS systems regulating food intake, metabolism, and food reward. Homeostatic circulating factors like insulin, glucocorticoids, and leptin that are generally increased by exposure to high fat/high caloric diets constitute important signals in these processes. They trigger functional activation of specific intracellular cascades mediating cellular sensitivity, survival, and synaptic plasticity. Using a model whereby the late fetal and neonatal rat is exposed to increased high fat (HF) via HF feeding of the mother, we investigated the proximal (neonatal) and distal (adult) consequences on metabolism and hippocampal function in the offspring. Adult offspring of HF‐fed mothers displayed several of the physiological and behavioral changes susceptible to leading to metabolic complications. These include elevated circulating concentrations of leptin and corticosterone, increased body weight gain and food intake, modest preference for fat‐containing food types, as well as the onset of hypothalamic leptin resistance. In the hippocampus, HF‐fed offspring or neonates treated with leptin show similar increases in neurogenesis and survival of newborn neurons. We identified some of the direct effects of leptin to increase synaptic proteins, N‐methyl‐d‐aspartate (NMDA), and glucocorticoid receptors, and to reduce long‐term potentiation (LTP) prior to weaning. While these studies have documented effects in animal models, concepts can easily be translated to human nutrition in order to help design better perinatal diets and nutritional preventive measures for mothers in a coordinated effort to curb the obesity trend.
A new hybrid parallel/reconfigurable architecture: the X4CP32

This paper describes a new kind of general-purpose microprocessor: the hybrid runtime reconfigurable/parallel X4CP32. It consists of 2 programming levels, based on a hierarchic array of easily and quickly reconfigurable entities. It brings a new concept of runtime reconfiguration and programming, which is its main strength. Although it is effective in heavy arithmetic applications, it is suited for virtually any task an application can demand, presenting a solid option for a general-purpose microprocessor.
Node label matching improves classification performance in Deep Belief Networks

If output signals of artificial neural network classifiers are interpreted per node as class label predictors then partial knowledge encoded by the network during the learning procedure can be exploited in order to reassign which output node should represent each class label so that learning speed and final classification accuracy are improved. Our method for computing these reassignments is based on the maximum average correlation between actual node outputs and target labels over a small labeled validation dataset. Node Label Matching is an ancillary method for both supervised and unsupervised learning in artificial neural networks and we demonstrate its integration with Contrastive Divergence pre-training in Restricted Boltzmann Machines and Back Propagation fine-tuning in Deep Belief Networks. We introduce the Segmented Density Random Binary dataset and present empirical results of Node Label Matching on both our synthetic data and a subset of the MNIST benchmark.
Novel gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapies against prostate cancer

There is no effective cure for late-stage hormone (androgen) refractory prostate cancer. Although chemotherapy offers palliation to these late-stage patients, it also leads to systemic toxicities leading to poor quality of life. Clearly, the focus is on the development and evaluation of novel biologically relevant alternatives such as cytoreductive gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (GDEPT). With the current limitations of effective gene delivery in vivo, the in situ amplification of cytotoxicity due to bystander effects of GDEPT has special attraction for patients with prostate cancer, the prostate being dispensable. This review focuses on the development, application and potential of various GDEPTs for treating prostate cancer. The current status of research related to the issues of enhancement of in situ GDEPT delivery and prostate cancer-specific targeting of vectors (especially viral vectors) is assessed. Finally, the scope and progress of synergies between GDEPT and other treatment modalities, both traditional and alternate, are discussed.
Color Image Segmentation based on Automatic Derivation of Local Thresholds

In this paper a new method for color image segmentation is presented. The proposed algorithm divides the image into homogeneous regions by derivation of local thresholds via local information. The algorithm contains two main steps. First, the watershed algorithm is applied on the image gradient magnitude. Its results are used as an initial segmentation for the next step, which is region merging process. During that process regions are merged and local thresholds are derived one-by-one at different times by analyzing local characteristics of the regions. Every threshold refers to specific region and defines it as ifinal regioni (non-mergeable). Thus, regions are handled separately; some regions grow while others were already defined as ifinal regionsi. The significant use of local information improves the quality of the segmentation result. Experimental results have demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed method. The algorithm is found to be reliable and robust for different images.
Jitter compensation of ZiYuan-3 satellite imagery based on object point coincidence

ABSTRACT Satellite jitter is a very important factor that affects the sensor orientation of ZiYuan-3 imagery based on a rational function model (RFM). The conventional affine transformation model is unable to compensate such periodic jitters. The sensor orientation accuracy is thereby worse than expected. To eliminate the influence of jitters and improve the orientation accuracy, a feasible jitter compensation method for ZiYuan-3 imagery based on object point coincidence is presented in this study. In this method, no actual ground control points (AGCPs) are required to estimate the jitter compensation parameters. First, numerous virtual object points are projected onto the image by using the RFM. Then, the residual errors between the image-space coordinates of the projected and corresponding points are used to detect the satellite jitters. Finally, two sinusoidal functions are used to model and compensate the jitters. Experimental results of the three ZiYuan-3 satellite images show that before the jitter compensation, the residual errors of the independent check points obviously show a sinusoidal pattern. These periodic errors cannot be effectively compensated by the affine transformation model even if the number of AGCPs is increased from 4 to 16. After the jitters are compensated with the estimated sinusoidal coefficients, the influence of jitters can be eliminated. The sensor orientation accuracies of the three images reach 0.852 pixels, 0.798 pixels, and 0.921 pixels, which are respectively 49.7%, 55.1%, 65.7% better than those achieved before the jitter compensation.
Low-density Lipoprotein Improves Motility and Plasma Membrane Integrity of Cryopreserved Canine Epididymal Spermatozoa

Cryopreservation of caudal epididymal spermatozoa is an effective technique to conserve genetic potentials of superior dogs when it is not possible to collect ejaculated spermatozoa. Although hen egg yolk is commonly supplemented into the semen extender, active substances within the egg yolk which protect sperm against cryoinjury remain to be discovered. Among its compositions, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) has been reported to have a cryoprotective property for sperm cryopreservation. However, the effects of LDL on dog epididymal spermatozoa during cryopreservation have not yet been investigated. This study aimed to investigate the effects of LDL on epididymal spermatozoa quality following cryopreservation and thawing. After routine castration of 12 dogs, caudal epididymides from individuals were separated from the testes and cut into a few pieces in a Tris-buffer. Spermatozoa recovered from each sample were examined at once for sperm quality and divided into six groups of extender: no LDL, 20% egg yolk, 4%, 8%, 16%, and 24% LDL, before cryopreservation. The sperm aliquots were then equilibrated and conventionally frozen. After thawing, sperm motility, morphology, plasma membrane integrity, and acrosome integrity were evaluated. The results revealed that 4% LDL and 20% egg yolk yielded significantly higher sperm motility (57.69% and 52.69%, respectively, p<0.05) than other LDLs. In addition, 4% LDL yielded the significantly highest plasma membrane integrity (70.54%, p<0.05). In conclusion, the supplementation of 4% LDL in Tris-glucose extender could be applied for cryopreservation of canine epididymal spermatozoa.