Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Proposal of Metrics for SSTA Accuracy Evaluation

With the recent advance of process technology shrinking, process parameter variation has become one of the major issues in SoC designs, especially for timing convergence. Recently, Statistical Static Timing Analysis (SSTA) has been proposed as a promising solution to consider the process parameter variation but it has not been widely used yet. For estimating the delay yield, designers have to know and understand the accuracy of SSTA. However, the accuracy has not been thoroughly studied from a practical point of view. This paper proposes two metrics to measure the pessimism/optimism of SSTA; the first corresponds to yield estimation error, and the second examines delay estimation error. We apply the metrics for a problem which has been widely discussed in SSTA community, that is, normal-distribution approximation of max operation. We also apply the proposed metrics for benchmark circuits and discuss about a potential problem originating from normal-distribution approximation. Our metrics indicate that the appropriateness of the approximation depends on not only given input distributions but also the target yield of the product, which is an important message for SSTA users.
MicroRNA and its roles in esophageal cancer

Summary Esophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer and causes the sixth highest cancer-related mortality worldwide. The 5-year survival of patients suffering from esophageal cancer in either advanced stage or metastasis is less than 20%. MicroRNAs are small, well conserved, non-coding RNA molecules that either repress translation or promote mRNA degradation based on the degree of complementary between miRNAs and mRNAs. Based on biogenesis and function of microRNAs, specific microRNA profiles, either from cancerous tissues or serum, were able to serve as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of esophageal cancer and predicted the effectiveness of surgery and chemoradiotherapy. MicroRNAs could also influence the biological behaviors of esophageal cancer cells, such as cellular proliferation, apoptosis, invasion and metastasis. MicroRNAs were also associated with multi-drug resistance of esophageal cancer. Further studies on the roles of microRNAs in esophageal cancer would provide a strategy to prevent and treat esophageal cancer, and reverse multi-drug resistance of esophageal cancer.
Modelling and Performance Analysis of Personalized DSR Routing Protocol to discover a selfish and Inimical Node in MANETs Using NS-2

In this paper we activated the default dynamic source routing protocol with a selfish and inimical node and compared the performance of this code with default dynamic source routing protocol. The performance of this code is degrades in contrast with default dynamic source routing protocol. To escape from this attack we introduced a personalized dynamic source routing protocol which perform better compare to dynamic source routing protocol with selfish and inimical nodes. For the implementation and analyse the performance NS-2.34 was used. For comparison of the both routing protocols throughput, end to end delay, PDR, packet loss and routing overhead parameters are used with Random waypoint mobility model.
End to End Text Recognition from Natural Scene

The web world is been flooded with multi-media sources such as images, videos, animations and audios, which has in turn made the computer vision researchers to focus over extracting the content from the sources. Scene text recognition basically involves two major steps namely Text Localization and Text Recognition. This paper provides end-to-end text recognition approach to extract the characters alone from the complex natural scene. Using Maximal Stable Extremal Region (MSER) the various objects are localized, using Canny Edge detection method edges are identified, further binary classification is done using Connected-Component method which segregates the text and nontext objects and finally the stroke analysis method is applied to analyse the style of the character, leading to the character recognization. The Experimental results were obtained by testing the approach over ICDAR2015 dataset, wherein text was able to be recognized from most of the scene images with good precision value.
Sound propagation in a pipe containing a liquid of comparable acoustic impedance

A detailed experimental study of sound propagation in liquids contained by pipes constructed of polymeric materials is discussed. Experiments were conducted with vertically aligned cylinders containing water ensonified at one end by a piston‐driven sound source. Significant sound attenuation (as much as 60 dB) was observed in pipes made of flexible polymeric materials, the effect increasing with frequency and loss tangent. Sound propagation in more rigid polymeric pipes exhibited similar characteristics to that in metallic pipe in that negligible attenuation was observed. In this latter case, a comparison was made with recent analytical work for which excellent agreement was obtained.
Quantified Interference : Information Theory and Information Flow ( Extended Abstract )

The paper investigates which of Shannon’s measures (entropy, conditional entropy, mutual information) is the right one for the task of quantifying information flow in a programming language. We examine earlier relevant contributions from Denning, McLean and Gray and we propose and motivate a specific quantitative definition of information flow. We prove results relating equivalence relations, interference of program variables, independence of random variables and the flow of confidential information. Finally, we show how, in our setting, Shannon’s Perfect Secrecy theorem provides a sufficient condition to determine whether a program leaks confidential information.
Volume conduction effects on bivariate Lempel-Ziv Complexity of Alzheimer's disease electroencephalograms

The spurious increase in coherence of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals between distant electrode points has long been understood to be due to volume conduction of the EEG signal. Reducing the volume conduction components of EEG recordings in pre-processing attenuates this. However, the effect of volume conduction on non-linear signal processing of EEG signals is yet to be fully described. This pilot study aimed to investigate the impact of volume conduction on results calculated with a distance based, bivariate form of Lempel-Ziv Complexity (dLZC) by analyzing EEG signals from Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients and healthy age-matched controls with and without pre-processing with Current Source Density (CSD) transformation. Spurious statistically significant differences between AD patients and control's EEG signals seen without CSD pre-processing were not seen with CSD volume conduction mitigation. There was, however, overlap in the region of electrodes which were seen to hold this statistically significant information. These results show that, while previously published findings are still valid, volume conduction mitigation is required to ensure non-linear signal processing methods identify changes in signals only due to the purely local signal alone.
Network-Aware Mitigation of Data Integrity Attacks on Power System State Estimation

Critical power system applications like contingency analysis and optimal power flow calculation rely on the power system state estimator. Hence the security of the state estimator is essential for the proper operation of the power system. In the future more applications are expected to rely on it, so that its importance will increase. Based on realistic models of the communication infrastructure used to deliver measurement data from the substations to the state estimator, in this paper we investigate the vulnerability of the power system state estimator to attacks performed against the communication infrastructure. We define security metrics that quantify the importance of individual substations and the cost of attacking individual measurements. We propose approximations of these metrics, that are based on the communication network topology only, and we compare them to the exact metrics. We provide efficient algorithms to calculate the security metrics. We use the metrics to show how various network layer and application layer mitigation strategies, like single and multi-path routing and data authentication, can be used to decrease the vulnerability of the state estimator. We illustrate the efficiency of the algorithms on the IEEE 118 and 300 bus benchmark power systems.
Trends in Cardiac Pacemaker Batteries

Batteries used in Implantable cardiac pacemakers-present unique challenges to their developers and manufacturers in terms of high levels of safety and reliability. In addition, the batteries must have longevity to avoid frequent replacements. Technological advances in leads/electrodes have reduced energy requirements by two orders of magnitude. Micro-electronics advances sharply reduce internal current drain concurrently decreasing size and increasing functionality, reliability, and longevity. It is reported that about 600,000 pacemakers are implanted each year worldwide and the total number of people with various types of implanted pacemaker has already crossed 3 million. A cardiac pacemaker uses half of its battery power for cardiac stimulation and the other half for housekeeping tasks such as monitoring and data logging. The first implanted cardiac pacemaker used nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery, later on zinc-mercury battery was developed and used which lasted for over 2 years. Lithium iodine battery invented and used by Wilson Greatbatch and his team in 1972 made the real impact to implantable cardiac pacemakers. This battery lasts for about 10 years and even today is the power source for many manufacturers of cardiac pacemakers. This paper briefly reviews various developments of battery technologies since the inception of cardiac pacemaker and presents the alternative to lithium iodine battery for the near future.
Action recognition for human-marionette interaction

In this paper, we propose a human-marionette interaction system based on a human action recognition approach for applications to interactive artistic puppetry and a mimicking-marionette game. We developed an intelligent marionette called "i-marionette" that is controlled by a sophisticated control device to achieve various human actions. Moreover, we utilized an action recognition approach to enable the i-marionette to learn and recognize complex dance movements. The idea of artistic puppetry is to present a conflict scenario between two different cultural worlds: the performer is active and represents the culture of modern technology based in the real world. In contrast, the i-marionette represents traditional culture and is passive and based in a virtual world. The active performer guides the passive i-marionette to form a space-time connection between the real world and the virtual world. The i-marionette mimics the performer's action, while the performer also mimics the i-marionette's action. The performance represents an artistic conception in which humans invent technology and the i-marionette is manipulated by human control. However, in this interactive circle, the human is implicitly affected by the i-marionette. In our mimicking-marionette game, a player mimics the i-marionette's action. Subsequently, our human action recognition system measures the action similarity between the player and the i-marionette, and our system provides a similarity score.
ENHANCING ERP SYSTEMS FOR SOX COMPLIANCE: KEY ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) introduced in 2002 by the United States government as a response to some blatant corporate frauds, such as Enron, has brought about widespread changes in the way publicly listed firms manage and report performance. While this legislation has put a serious mandate and responsibility on organizations and its managers to improve their corporate governance, risk management, and performance reporting processes, corporate initiatives to comply with SOX also require significant enhancements to ERP systems. ERP systems provide the primary means and foundations for implementing internal controls and improving business processes, which are critical for complying with SOX regulations. In this paper, we analyze the challenges faced by firms in enhancing their ERP systems to comply with the new legislative requirements imposed by SOX.
Concavity of the Mutual Information Rate for Input-Restricted Memoryless Channels at High SNR

We consider a memoryless channel with an input Markov process supported on a mixing finite-type constraint. We continue the development of asymptotics for the entropy rate of the output hidden Markov chain and deduce that, at high signal-to-noise ratio, the mutual information rate of such a channel is concave with respect to “almost” all input Markov chains of a given order.
Simple phase rotation for two-input multile-output spatial multiplexing in transmit correlated channels

In MIMO wireless communications, spatial multiplexing can be employed to achieve high data rate. However, its performance can be degraded in the presence of spatial correlation among transmit antennas. Hence, we propose a simple closed-form linear precoder to improve the performance when two transmit antennas are exploited at the transmitter. For the proposed scheme, we consider a maximum likelihood detector (MLD) at the receiver. Our proposed precoder rotates the constellation by a certain phase which is easily obtained by the correlation matrix of the channel. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve near- optimal performance with remarkably reduced computational complexity helped by the closed-form solution.
Adherence to Diaphragm Use for Infection Prevention: A Prospective Study of Female Sex Workers in Kenya

Objective. To assess adherence to and acceptability of the diaphragm among 140 female sex workers in Kenya in a 6-month prospective study. Methods. At baseline and bimonthly visits, participants were interviewed on diaphragm knowledge, attitude, and practices. We used principal component analysis and logistic regression to identify predictors of consistent use. Results. At 50% of 386 bimonthly visits, women reported consistently using a diaphragm with all partners during the preceding 2 weeks. Consistent use was significantly higher at the 6-month than the 2-month visit. Women reported less covert use with “helping” (regular sex partners to whom she could go for help or support) than with “other” partners. Perceptions that diaphragms are easier to use than condoms and that their lack of coital interruption is important were associated with consistent diaphragm use with both partner types. Partner support of diaphragm use is correlated with consistent use with “helping” partners only while higher parity, consistent condom use, and perceived lack of need of condoms as a benefit of diaphragms were associated with consistent use with “other” partners. Conclusions. Diaphragm acceptance among female sex workers in Nairobi was high. Future studies should distinguish between partner types when evaluating diaphragm adherence.
Nonlinear investigation of the pulsational properties of RR Lyrae variables

We present a theoretical investigation on periods and amplitudes of RR Lyrae pulsators by adopting stellar parameters which cover the range of theoretical evolutionary expectations. Extensive grids of nonlinear, nonlocal and time-dependent convective RR Lyrae envelope models have been computed to investigate the pulsational behavior in both fundamental and first overtone modes at selected luminosity levels and over an effective temperature range which covers the whole instability region. In order to avoid spurious evaluations of modal stability and pulsation amplitudes, the coupling between pulsation and convection was followed through a direct time integration of the leading equations until radial motions approached their limiting amplitude. Blue and red boundaries for pulsational instability into the HR diagram are presented for three different mass values , 0.65 and 0.58 , together with an atlas of full amplitude theoretical light curves for both fundamental and first overtone pulsators and for two different assumptions of stellar masses: and 0.65 . The dependence of periods on stellar parameters is discussed and new analytical relations connecting the period to the masses, luminosities and effective temperatures are provided. We show that theoretical expectations concerning minimum fundamental periods are in good agreement with the observational evidence of a dichotomic period distribution between different Oosterhoff type clusters. A rather good correlation has been found between the pulsational amplitude of fundamental pulsators and the effective temperature, rather independently of stellar mass and luminosity. Theoretical periods have been combined with theoretical amplitudes in order to predict the location of the pulsators in the Bailey amplitude-period diagram. Comparison with observational data brings to light what we regard as a clear indication that the OR region, i.e. the region where both fundamental and first overtone show a stable limit cycle, is populated by fundamental or first overtone pulsators in Oosterhoff I and Oosterhoff II clusters respectively. Some evident mismatches between theory and observation have also been found, and they are presented and discussed.
Ressource management for Amplify and Forward and Decode and Forward relaying systems

This paper addresses the optimization of ressource allocation based on Decode and Forward (DF) or Amplify and Forward (AF) relaying techniques for packet access Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) networks. A power allocation quasi-optimal solution with a low complexity has been proposed for the two forwarding techniques. To illustrate theirs performances, a selection of numerical results has been used. It has been shown from these results that DF outperforms AF if the relay is in the central region between source and destination, and the two techniques provides similar performances in the edge regions.
Long Telomeres Produced by Telomerase-Resistant Recombination Are Established from a Single Source and Are Subject to Extreme Sequence Scrambling

Considerable evidence now supports the idea that the moderate telomere lengthening produced by recombinational telomere elongation (RTE) in a Kluyveromyces lactis telomerase deletion mutant occurs through a roll-and-spread mechanism. However, it is unclear whether this mechanism can account for other forms of RTE that produce much longer telomeres such as are seen in human alternative lengthening of telomere (ALT) cells or in the telomerase-resistant type IIR “runaway” RTE such as occurs in the K. lactis stn1-M1 mutant. In this study we have used mutationally tagged telomeres to examine the mechanism of RTE in an stn1-M1 mutant both with and without telomerase. Our results suggest that the establishment stage of the mutant state in newly generated stn1-M1 ter1-Δ mutants surprisingly involves a first stage of sudden telomere shortening. Our data also show that, as predicted by the roll-and-spread mechanism, all lengthened telomeres in a newly established mutant cell commonly emerge from a single telomere source. However, in sharp contrast to the RTE of telomerase deletion survivors, we show that the RTE of stn1-M1 ter1-Δ cells produces telomeres whose sequences undergo continuous intense scrambling via recombination. While telomerase was not necessary for the long telomeres in stn1-M1 cells, its presence during their establishment was seen to interfere with the amplification of repeats via recombination, a result consistent with telomerase retaining its ability to add repeats during active RTE. Finally, we observed that the presence of active mismatch repair or telomerase had important influences on telomeric amplification and/or instability.
Frequent absence and presence itemset for negative association rule mining

Negative association rule (NAR) mining has created more attention recently due to the knowledge and discovery of the interestingness of the pattern of the negative association rules and the challenges during the mining process. Pattern from negative association rules are considered to be unique and unexpected compared to positive rules. Negative association rules are useful in analysis for decision making in identifying the items which conflict with each other or the items that complement each other. However, negative association rules mining still have their own issues such as mining space and good quality of negative association rules. In this paper, we provide the preliminaries of basic concepts of negative association rule. We proposed an enhancement in Apriori algorithm for mining negative association rule from frequent absence and presence (FAP) itemset. Prominent literature will be discussed to further understand negative association rule mining.
Update on Pharmaceutical and Minimally Invasive Management Strategies for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a debilitating pulmonary disorder with systemic effects, and it is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. COPD patients not only develop respiratory limitations, but can also demonstrate systemic wasting, features of depression, and can succumb to social isolation. Smoking cessation is crucial, and pharmacotherapy with bronchodilators is helpful in symptom management. Inhaled corticosteroids may be beneficial in some patients. In addition, pulmonary rehabilitation and palliative care are important components under the right clinical circumstance. This review highlights current guidelines and management strategies for COPD and emphasizes novel pharmacotherapy and minimally invasive (nonsurgical) lung-volume reduction interventions that may prove to be of significant benefit in the future.
The expression of emotion through nonverbal behavior in medical visits

Relationship-centered care reflects both knowing and feeling: the knowledge that physician and patient bring from their respective domains of expertise, and the physician’s and patient’s experience, expression, and perception of emotions during the medical encounter. These processes are conveyed and reciprocated in the care process through verbal and nonverbal communication. We suggest that the emotional context of care is especially related to nonverbal communication and that emotion-related communication skills, including sending and receiving nonverbal messages and emotional self-awareness, are critical elements of high-quality care. Although nonverbal behavior has received far less study than other care processes, the current review argues that it holds significance for the therapeutic relationship and influences important outcomes including satisfaction, adherence, and clinical outcomes of care.