Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Latent thermally activated interface-trap generation in MOS devices

A large increase in interface-trap density (up to a factor of five) has been observed in commercial MOS devices at very long times after irradiation (>10/sup 6/ s). This latent buildup occurs after an initial apparent saturation of interface-trap density, which occurs typically within approximately 10/sup 2/-10/sup 4/ s after irradiation. The latent buildup is thermally activated. with an activation energy of approximately 0.47 ev. Within experimental uncertainty, this is equal to the activation energy ( approximately 0.45 eV) for the diffusion of molecular hydrogen in bulk fused silica. Latent interface-trap buildup can degrade the performance of devices in low-dose-rate radiation environments (e.g. space). <<ETX>>
Incremental Value of Transthoracic Doppler Echocardiography‐Assessed Coronary Flow Reserve in Patients With Suspected Myocardial Ischemia Undergoing Myocardial Perfusion Scintigraphy

Background Adenosine‐assisted transthoracic Doppler‐derived coronary flow reserve (TDE‐CFR) reflects coronary vascular function. The prognostic and incremental value of left anterior descending coronary artery TDE‐CFR above myocardial perfusion scintigraphy in patients with suspected myocardial ischemia has not yet been studied. Methods and Results Three hundred seventy‐one patients (mean age, 62.3±8.7 years; 46.8% males) referred to myocardial perfusion scintigraphy attributed to suspected myocardial ischemia were included in the study. The TDE‐CFR result was blinded to the referring physician. Patients were followed up regarding major cardiovascular events, defined as cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, or acute revascularization during a median follow‐up time of 4.5 years. A TDE‐CFR value of ≤2.0 was considered reduced. Major cardiovascular events occurred during follow‐up in 60 patients (16.2%). A reduced TDE‐CFR was detected in 76 patients (20.5%). Patients with reduced TDE‐CFR had an event rate of 36.8% compared to 10.8% in patients with normal TDE‐CFR (unadjusted hazard ratio, 4.63; 95% CI, 2.78–7.69; P<0.001). In a multivariate model, TDE‐CFR remained a significant independent predictor of major cardiovascular events. The major cardiovascular events rate was 7.5% in patients without myocardial perfusion scintigraphy‐detected myocardial ischemia and normal TDE‐CFR (n=200), 24.2% in patients without ischemia but with reduced TDE‐CFR (n=33), and 46.5% in patients with both myocardial perfusion scintigraphy–detected myocardial ischemia and a reduced TDE‐CFR (n=43; P<0.001). Conclusions Coronary microvascular dysfunction, as determined by TDE‐CFR, is a strong independent predictor of cardiovascular events and adds incremental prognostic value compared with myocardial perfusion scintigraphy. The current study supports routine assessment of CFR in patients with suspected ischemic heart disease.
Launching the AquaMAV: bioinspired design for aerial–aquatic robotic platforms

Current Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) are greatly limited by being able to operate in air only. Designing multimodal MAVs that can fly effectively, dive into the water and retake flight would enable applications of distributed water quality monitoring, search and rescue operations and underwater exploration. While some can land on water, no technologies are available that allow them to both dive and fly, due to dramatic design trade-offs that have to be solved for movement in both air and water and due to the absence of high-power propulsion systems that would allow a transition from underwater to air. In nature, several animals have evolved design solutions that enable them to successfully transition between water and air, and move in both media. Examples include flying fish, flying squid, diving birds and diving insects. In this paper, we review the biological literature on these multimodal animals and abstract their underlying design principles in the perspective of building a robotic equivalent, the Aquatic Micro Air Vehicle (AquaMAV). Building on the inspire–abstract–implement bioinspired design paradigm, we identify key adaptations from nature and designs from robotics. Based on this evaluation we propose key design principles for the design of successful aerial–aquatic robots, i.e. using a plunge diving strategy for water entry, folding wings for diving efficiency, water jet propulsion for water takeoff and hydrophobic surfaces for water shedding and dry flight. Further, we demonstrate the feasibility of the water jet propulsion by building a proof-of-concept water jet propulsion mechanism with a mass of 2.6 g that can propel itself up to 4.8 m high, corresponding to 72 times its size. This propulsion mechanism can be used for AquaMAV but also for other robotic applications where high-power density is of use, such as for jumping and swimming robots.
Doctoral Education as Social Practice for Knowledge Development

This article reports on an empirical study of industry PhD students in the Swedish Graduate School for Applied IT and Software Engineering. The students were questioned in semi-structured interviews about their experiences of sharing their postgraduate studies between industrial and academic environments. The results from the first analysis indicate that there are considerable differences between companies in terms of their traditions and their propensity to take part in joint knowledge development with universities. Three types of company environment were identified in this context: (a) research-intense, (b) engineering and (c) consultancy. The focus of this study is on how the type of activity, the difference in time perspective between companies and universities, the competence of other company employees and the character of the thesis project affect the doctoral student's situation, identity, support and participation in knowledge development.
Sentiment Feature Selection Algorithm for Chinese Micro-blog

Sentiment analysis is to extract the opinion of the user from of the text documents. Sentiment classification using machine learning methods face problem of handing huge number of unique terms in a feature vector for the classification. Therefore, a feature selection method is required to eliminate the irrelevant and noisy features from the feature vector for efficient working of ML algorithms. Rought set Theory based feature selection method is not good at Chinese text although it did well in English text. In this paper, improved feature selection methods are proposed which are based on rough set theory and adapt to the Chinese micro blog. We name them as IGAR (IG and Rough set) and CHIAR (CHI and Rough set). The performance of the improved feature selection methods are compared with Information Gain (IG) method which has been identified as one of the best feature selection method for sentiment classification. Experimentation of improved feature selection methods was performed on two datasets which are extracted from Sina microblog. Experimental results show that improved feature selection methods outperform other feature selection.
Implications of Productivity Growth in Pakistan: An Economy-Wide Analysis

Public investments and policies under Pakistanâ€™s new Framework for Economic Growth are expected to lead to substantial gains in productivity, especially in the industrial and service sectors of Pakistanâ€™s economy. Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model simulations using a new 2008 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for Pakistan show that achieving high productivity growth targets broadly consistent with the Framework for Economic Growth would imply a 9.3 percent per year gain in average household income (compared to trend growth in household incomes of 5.8 percent). Accelerating agricultural growth as well, however, would result in even greater overall economic growth with an additional 2.6 percent gain in average household income. Moreover, with accelerated agriculture growth, real incomes of poor household groups rise substantially, by an additional 2.9 to 4.5 percent, as food-deficit urban poor and poor rural non-farm households benefit from lower real food prices, and agricultural growth spurs rural non-farm output and incomes.
Radioactive uranium measurement in vivo using a handheld interfaced analyzer

A trace uranium (U) detection method was developed with a handheld voltammetric analyzer that was the size of a mobile phone, with working sensors made of simple graphite pencil electrode (PE). The optimum stripping voltammetric conditions were sought, and the following results were obtained: 0.0 to 0.08 ng/L working ranges and a statistically relative standard deviation of 1.78% (RSD; n = 15) at a 10.0 µg/L U spike. The experiment accumulation time used was only 150 s. Under this condition, the diagnostic detection limit approached 0.007 ng/L. The method was applied to soil of a natural rock in a radioactive mineralogy site. Earthworms that resided at this site were assayed. The method was found to be applicable in biological diagnosis or in real‐time in vivo survey. Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2010;29:1025–1030. © 2010 SETAC
Supporting Users of Open Online Courses with Recommendations: An Algorithmic Study

Almost all studies on course recommenders in online platforms target closed online platforms that belong to a University or other provider. Recently, a demand has developed that targets open platforms. Such platforms lack rich user profiles with content metadata. Instead they log user interactions. We report on how user interactions and activities tracked in open online learning platforms may generate recommendations. We use data from the OpenU open online learning platform in use by the Open University of the Netherlands to investigate the application of several state-of-the-art recommender algorithms, including a graph-based recommender approach. It appears that user-based and memory-based methods perform better than model-based and factorization methods. Particularly, the graph-based recommender system outperforms the classical approaches on prediction accuracy of recommendations in terms of recall.
On the Genetic Control of Genes Located in the Sex-Chromosome Heterochromatin of DROSOPHILA MELANOGASTER.

The genetic properties of a recessive autosomal point mutant, "daughterless" (symbol: da), are described. They are: (1) da maps in the euchromatin of 2L at about position 39 on the genetic map and between 27D and 31E on the salivary map; (2) when homozygous in females, da causes the production of unisexual male progenies owing to sex differential zygote mortality in the egg stage; (3) da has no effect on the progeny of mutant males; (4) female zygotes die, while at least some male zygotes survive, irrespective of the number of Y chromosomes or the amount of X-chromosome heterochromatin carried by either the mutant female or her progeny; (5) homozygous da progeny of heterozygous parents also show sex differential survival favoring males indicating a da effect in development as well as in oogenesis, but with the developmental effect much less pronounced; (6) extra heterochromatin from either the X or Y chromosome in either the mother or her progeny can reduce the mortality caused by da in development (and, therefore, conceivably can also reduce the abnormality in oogenesis, although this is obscured by the severity of the maternal effect.)-From these results, it is suggested that (1) da regulates either the activity of structural genes in the sex chromosome heterochromatin or the activity or stability of their products, and (2) it is a defective product of sex chromosome heterochromatic genes that causes the abnormalities resulting in the observed mortality of heterozygous progeny of homozygous mutant mothers and of homozygous mutant progeny of heterozygous mothers. -The striking parallels with the properties of the gene, "abnormal oocyte" are noted as is the close linkage between the two loci. The possibility of a special sex-chromosome-heterochromatin-regulator region on chromosome 2 is considered.
Regulation of CD4 T‐cell receptor diversity by vaccine adjuvants

New vaccines based on soluble recombinant antigens (Ags) require adjuvants to elicit long‐lasting protective humoral and cellular immunity. Despite the importance of CD4 T helper cells for the generation of long‐lived memory B and CD8 T cells, the impact of adjuvants on CD4 T‐cell responses is still poorly understood. Adjuvants are known to promote dendritic cell (DC) maturation and migration to secondary lymphoid organs where they present foreign peptides bound to class II major histocompatibility complex molecules (pMHCII) to naïve CD4 T cells. Random and imprecise rearrangements of genetic elements during thymic development ensure that a vast amount of T‐cell receptors (TCRs) are present in the naïve CD4 T‐cell repertoire. Ag‐specific CD4 T cells are selected from this vast pre‐immune repertoire based on the affinity of their TCR for pMHCII. Here, we review the evidence demonstrating a link between the adjuvant and the specificity and clonotypic diversity of the CD4 T‐cell response, and consider the potential mechanisms at play.
The Short-Run Boundaries for Implementation of Fiscal Policy in the Euro Zone: Lessons from the Current Recession and Policy Suggestions

This study analyzes the short run issues of fiscal policy implementation in the Euro Area and the effectiveness of debt expansion in member economies. The research indicates that both developing economies and those with high levels of accumulated debt face trouble with the expansion and management of their deficits. These differences indicate why the Stability and Growth Pact is not efficient to provide budgetary cooperation between the Euro Zone economies. The theoretical and econometric analysis in this work indicates a strong -- and unequal -- causal relation between the debt level and risk premium over debt obligations issued in the primary market since the launch of the euro. These results indicate that establishing a primary common area bond market can help to relieve troubled economies, such as Greece, from their structural budgetary problem. Nevertheless, resistance to higher interest on debt amongst the leading economies in the group would make the implementation of such a market a difficult task.
Simulation Driven Design of Novel Integrated Circuits -- Physics of Failure Simulation of the Electronic Control Modules for Harsh Environment Application

Reduction of development time of an advanced Electronic Control Unit (ECU) requires optimization of the product design at the early stage of development. A simulation-driven design has been used effectively to define the ideal position of components for optimum reliability even before the first prototype is manufactured. Such methods are based on a virtual design of experiments that allows to investigate different layouts or to optimize the ECU. In this paper a physics of failure simulation of the ECU is presented for automotive applications. A test vehicle with power packages on a PCB is designed and tested to enable the analysis of system behavior with three different relative orientations of DPAKs (Discrete Package). The failure modes are identified by FMMEA, and risk assessment is conducted using a systematic simulation approach. The approach involves a sequential numerical simulation of electrical, thermal and thermo-mechanical analysis. The final results are analyzed with a special emphasis on the design elements, where the failure is expected.
ERRCA: A buffer-efficient reconfigurable optical Network-on-Chip with permanent-error recognition

Optical on-chip communication technology provides an unprecedented bandwidth. It allows to connect the hundreds or even thousands of processing elements expected in many core systems using optical Network-on-Chip. However, the required buffers to interface the electrical and optical layers are very large, since optical data-flow cannot be stored. Moreover, on-chip optical technologies have high defect rates which limits its usability severely. In order to address these challenges, this work presents a buffer-efficient reconfigurable optical Network-on-Chip with permanent-error recognition. The buffer-efficiency is achieved by a global credit-based arbitration with optical tokens. Further on, the architecture autonomously detects permanent errors in the optical components and configures the communication paths to avoid them. The work provides a thorough analysis at the gate-level of the area overhead incurred by the electrical sub-modules of the proposed system. It shows the practicability of the approach, experimental validated on a FPGA prototype. Compared with previously reported optical networks, it achieves an area reduction of up to 80% with almost identical performance.
Puncture resistance and tensile strength of skin simulants

Abstract This study aims ultimately to quantify the force needed to penetrate human tissue. The results will reduce the subjectivity of expert opinion in stabbing incidents. They will also aid clinicians in assessing the severity of injury and help prevent the unnecessary deaths which can occur when this is not fully appreciated. Tensile tests were performed to identify suitable skin simulants with synthetic chamois and pigskin as candidate materials. Quasi-static penetration experiments were also performed in which a knife blade penetrated a skin simulant target. Pigskin was found to be much stronger than chamois under tensile load yet the puncture resistance was almost identical for the two materials.
Regression Curves for the Optical Parameters of the Eye

Abstract Based on the data collected by Stenstrom (1948), the regression curves involving refractive error and axial length are examined. The regression of refractive error on axial length is shown to be nonlinear; it curves upward at low axial lengths and downward at high axial lengths. It is shown that this curve can be partially accounted for by the lack of compensating corneal changes for extreme values of the axial length. On the other hand, the regression of axial length on refractive error, is shown to be approximately linear. The slope of this regression is related to a formula derived from geometrical optics.
Flexibility of Deficit Ceiling and Income Fluctuation

To avoid fiscal crisis, a government can impose a long-term deficit ceiling. A key issue that has arisen with respect to this is how long-term objectives should be modified to accommodate economic fluctuations and to maintain some flexibility with respect to fiscal stabilization policy in a political economy. By incorporating the political efforts of private agents into a simple model, we explore how income fluctuations affect the deficit ceiling in a political economy. If the government can optimally impose a deficit ceiling, normally, the deficit ceiling should rise in a recession as a first-best case; however, interestingly, a recession does not necessarily prompt an increase in the deficit ceiling in the second-best case. The response of the optimal deficit ceiling to income fluctuations mainly depends on the effect of fiscal privileges on the marginal benefit of useful public spending and on the extent of political effort.
The impact of antiretroviral treatment on the burden of invasive pneumococcal disease in South African children: a time series analysis

Objective:HIV infection is a major risk factor for invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). A national antiretroviral program was initiated in South Africa in 2004. This study evaluates the impact of the highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) treatment program on the burden of IPD among African children. Design:Retrospective analysis of laboratory-confirmed IPD among children under 18 years of age, from 2003 to 2008. Methods:The periods 2003–2004, 2005–2006 and 2007–2008 were defined as the early, intermediate and established HAART eras, respectively. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine was not introduced into public immunization during this period. Results:One thousand, one hundred and seventy-one episodes of IPD were identified over the study period. Among HIV-infected children under 18 years, the burden of IPD decreased by 50.8% [95% confidence interval (CI) 41.5–58.7] and the incidence of IPD-related mortality declined by 65.2% (95% CI 47.2–77.0) from the early compared to the established HAART era. This decline in HIV-infected children was evident for pneumococcal bacteremia and pneumococcal meningitis. In addition, similar reductions were observed for serotypes included in a 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine and nonvaccine serotypes. The burden of IPD remained unchanged in HIV-uninfected children under 18 years of age over these periods. The risk of IPD, however, remained 42-fold greater in HIV-infected compared to HIV-uninfected children in the established HAART era. Conclusions:Although the HAART program has been associated with significant declines in IPD morbidity and mortality, HIV-infected African children with access to HAART remain a high-risk group for IPD. These children should therefore be prioritized in the prevention of IPD.
A V band singly balanced diode mixer for space application

The paper describes the design of a V band single balanced mixer to be employed in the front end of an on-board receiver for space applications. The V band receiver is a demonstrator for the use of different monolithic processes and interconnection/assembly technologies in space applications at such high frequencies. The receiver front-end consists of a multi-stage LNA amplification followed by an image reject filter, the mixer and a frequency doubler for the local oscillator. All the chips are mounted over an LTTC substrate using bumps/hot vias technology. Chip to chip interconnection is provided by coplanar waveguide on LTTC. The mixer employs a rat race 180/spl deg/ hybrid to balance the local oscillator and a couple of Schottky diodes as mixing elements. The technology employed is a 0.15 /spl mu/m pHEMT process that offers diodes with a cut off frequency higher than 300 GHz. The choices made for the mixer type and topology starting from the system specifications are covered in the paper along with the actual description of the circuit design.
Universal Constructions for (Co)Relations: categories, monoidal categories, and props

Calculi of string diagrams are increasingly used to present the syntax and algebraic structure of various families of circuits, including signal flow graphs, electrical circuits and quantum processes. In many such approaches, the semantic interpretation for diagrams is given in terms of relations or corelations (generalised equivalence relations) of some kind. In this paper we show how semantic categories of both relations and corelations can be characterised as colimits of simpler categories. This modular perspective is important as it simplifies the task of giving a complete axiomatisation for semantic equivalence of string diagrams. Moreover, our general result unifies various theorems that are independently found in literature and are relevant for program semantics, quantum computation and control theory.