Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Unified Backend for Targeting FPGAs from DSLs

The major flaw of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is their hard programmability and steep learning curve. Even though High-Level Synthesis (HLS) tools may alleviate this task by providing directives to optimize the hardware design, as well as supporting languages like C/C++ and OpenCL, the development of efficient designs for FPGA is still a challenging and time-consuming task. In this context, Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) represent an emerging solution to generate efficient code to target FPGAs. However, the support for these languages towards FPGA is still limited, and only few DSLs provide FPGA backends. This paper describes FROST, a unified backend for targeting FPGAs from DSLs. FROST takes as input an algorithm described in one of the supported DSLs and generates an optimized design suitable for HLS tools. To this end, FROST exposes a high-level scheduling co-language to drive many aspects of the optimization process, like the resulting architecture, the level of parallelism, and so on. We evaluated FROST on a set of image processing kernels, developed in Halide and TIRAMISU, and compared the results against a hand-tuned FPGA library. The experimental results demonstrate that FROST designs are able to match the performance of such library (exploiting the same level of parallelism), and surpass it by a factor of 10X when combining FROST and the frontends scheduling commands.
Quantum nondemolition measurement of optical field fluctuations by optomechanical interaction

According to quantum mechanics, if we keep observing a continuous variable we generally disturb its evolution. For a class of observables, however, it is possible to implement a so-called quantum nondemolition measurement: by confining the perturbation to the conjugate variable, the observable is estimated with arbitrary accuracy, or prepared in a well-known state. For instance, when the light bounces on a movable mirror, its intensity is not perturbed (the effect is just seen on the phase of the radiation), but the radiation pressure allows one to trace back its fluctuations by observing the mirror motion. In this work, we implement a cavity optomechanical experiment based on an oscillating micromirror, and we measure correlations between the output light intensity fluctuations and the mirror motion. We demonstrate that the uncertainty of the former is reduced below the shot-noise level determined by the corpuscular nature of light.
Cerebrospinal Fluid b-Glucocerebrosidase Activity Is Reduced in Parkinson ’ s Disease Patients

Background: Reduced b-glucocerebrosidase activity was observed in postmortem brains of both GBA1 mutation carrier and noncarrier Parkinson’s disease patients, suggesting that lower bglucocerebrosidase activity is a key feature in the pathogenesis of PD. The objectives of this study were to confirm whether there is reduced b-glucocerebrosidase activity in the CSF of GBA1 mutation carrier and noncarrier PD patients and verify if other lysosomal enzymes show altered activity in the CSF. Methods: CSF b-glucocerebrosidase, cathepsin D, and b-hexosaminidase activities were measured in 79 PD and 61 healthy controls from the BioFIND cohort. The whole GBA1 gene was sequenced. Results : Enzyme activities were normalized according to CSF protein content (specific activity). b-glucocerebrosidase specific activity was significantly decreased in PD versus controls (-28%, P < 0.001). GBA1 mutations were found in 10 of 79 PD patients (12.7%) and 3 of 61 controls (4.9%). GBA1 mutation carrier PD patients showed significantly lower b-glucocerebrosidase specific activity versus noncarriers. b-glucocerebrosidase specific activity was also decreased in noncarrier PD patients versus controls (-25%, P < 0.001). Cathepsin D specific activity was lower in PD versus controls (-21%, P < 0.001). b-Hexosaminidase showed a similar trend. b-Glucocerebrosidase specific activity fairly discriminated PD from controls (area under the curve, 0.72; sensitivity, 0.67; specificity, 0.77). A combination of b-glucocerebrosidase, cathepsin D, and bhexosaminidase improved diagnostic accuracy (area under the curve, 0.77; sensitivity, 0.71; specificity, 0.85). Lower bglucocerebrosidase and b-hexosaminidase specific activities were associated with worse cognitive performance. Conclusions: CSF b-glucocerebrosidase activity is reduced in PD patients independent of their GBA1 mutation carrier status. Cathepsin D and b-hexosaminidase were also decreased. The possible link between altered CSF lysosomal enzyme activities and cognitive decline deserves further investigation. VC 2017 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society
Effect of Potassium on Potato Tuber Production in Acid Soils of Malepatan, Pokhara

Soils of Pokhara valley, especially Malepatan, are fine textured silt loam, extremely acidic in nature (3.7-4.0 pH) and are medium in soil potassium content. On-station experiments were conducted to assess the response of potassium (K 2 O) and its application methods on potato tuber yield in an extremely acid soil condition. Six potassium levels (0, 50, 75, 100 kg ha -1 as basal application, 50 kg basal plus 50 kg top dressed, and 50 kg basal plus 50 kg foliar application) were tested in the experiment for three consecutive years (2000, 2001 and 2002). A randomized complete block design (RCBD) with 3 replications was employed. Variety used was MS 42. Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P 2 O 5 ) and compost were applied as basal dose in each plots at the rate of 100 kg, 50 kg and 20 t ha -1 , respectively. Three years mean result on the plant growth characters revealed that tallest plant height was recorded (33.22 cm) when 50 kg ha -1 potassium was applied basally and 50 kg ha -1 top-dressed. The trend was quite similar in tillers production (6.96 branches plant -1 ) and biomass production (168.66 g plant -1 ). Maximum of 473.33-g plant -1 of tubers was produced when 100 kg of potassium was applied basal single dose. Highest tuber yield of 24.75 t ha -1 of tuber were produced when 50 kg potassium was applied basally and 50 kg top- dressed, a total of 100 kg ha -1 . Highly significant response of potassium levels on tuber production was observed in all the years. The results of this investigation suggested that application of potassium (K 2 O) at the rate of 50 kg ha -1 basal and 50 kg ha -1 top-dressed in 45 days could increase potato tuber yield satisfactorily in extremely acid soil condition. Key words: Basal application; potassium levels; Solanum tuberosum; tuber production; topdressing DOI: 10.3126/narj.v7i0. 1867 Nepal Agriculture Research Journal Vol.7 2006 pp.42-48
Meso- scale Wind Variability. Final Report

The project has aimed to characterize mesoscale meteorological phenomenon for the North Sea and the Inner Danish waters, and additionally aimed on improving the predictability and quality of the power production from offshore windfarms. The meso-scale meteorology has been characterized with respect to the physical processes, climatology, spectral characteristics and correlation properties based on measurements from wind farms, satellite data (SAR) and mesoscale numerical modeling (WRF). The abilities of the WRF model to characterize and predict relevant mesoscale phenomenon has been proven. Additionally application of statistical forecasting, using a Markov switching approach that can be related to the meteorological conditions, to analyze and short term predict the power production from an offshore wind farms have been documented. Two PhD studies have been conducted in connection with the project. The project has been a cooperative project between Risø DTU, IMM DTU, DONG Energy, Vattenfall and VESTAS. It is registered as Energinet.dk, project no. 2007-1-7141. ISSN 0106-2840 ISBN 978-87-550-3937-7
The Impact of a Network Split on Cascading Failure Processes

Cascading failure models are typically used to capture the phenomenon where failures possibly trigger further failures in succession, causing knock-on effects. In many networks this ultimately leads to a disintegrated network where the failure propagation continues independently across the various components. In order to gain insight in the impact of network splitting on cascading failure processes, we extend a well-established cascading failure model for which the number of failures obeys a power-law distribution. We assume that a single line failure immediately splits the network in two components, and examine its effect on the power-law exponent. The results provide valuable qualitative insights that are crucial first steps towards understanding more complex network splitting scenarios.
Defection of Platelet Mitochondrial DNA Deletions in Kearns-Sayre Syndrome

To establish a noninvasive genetic diagnosing method for Kearns-Sayre syndrome, the authors used the polymerasc chain reaction (PCR) technique for detecting mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) deletions in the platelets and directly sequenced the crossover regions of the deleted mtDNA using the fluorescence-based automated sequencing system. The mtDNA deletions were identified in the platelets of three of four patients. The sizes and locations of deletions were determined by the nesting primer PCR method, in which the primary PCR products derived from deleted mtDNAs undergo reamplifkation using a series of nesting primers. With the fluorescence-based sequencing of templates amplified by the asymmetric PCR method, deleted mtDNA was sequenced directly without cloning. In patient 1, guanine (G) was found at the boundaries of a deleted segment spanning 8400 base pairs (bp) between the CO1 and ND6 genes. In patient 2, a 9-bp directly repeated sequence of 5'-ACCTCCCTC-3' (where A = adenine, C = cytosine, and T = thymine) was found at the boundaries of a deleted segment spanning 7221 bp between the CO1 and ND5 genes. In patient 3, an 8-bp sequence of 5-ICGCTGTC-3' was found at the boundaries of a deleted segment spanning 4664 bp between the ATPase6 and ND5 genes. Deletions were not detected in the mtDNA of patient 4 or in that of the mothers of the patients. Previously, the genetic diagnosis of this syndrome required muscle biopsy specimens and the use of Southern blot analysis. However, this method requires neither muscle biopsy nor isotopes and is more rapid than the Southern blot method. These results indicate that this method is useful for noninvasive genetic diagnosis of Kearns-Sayre syndrome. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci 32:2667-2675, 1991
Intravenous lidocaine for acute pain: an evidence-based clinical update

### Key points Poorly controlled acute pain remains one of the most undesirable consequences after surgery. Despite increased awareness and widespread efforts to address this, reports continue to estimate that a significant number of patients undergoing surgery experience moderate to severe pain, with a majority of them expressing dissatisfaction with their pain management.1 Advances in multimodal analgesia have largely replaced conventional opioid mono-therapy, but continued reliance on opioids to manage postoperative pain may at least partly explain the inadequacy of conventional acute pain management. Almost 30 yr ago, the well-known ‘WHO Step Ladder’ was introduced and has since become a widely accepted concept for rational pain management. This concept has had a major impact on developing the current rationale for the management of acute pain by introducing the concept of multimodal analgesia, highlighting the importance of determining pain severity, encouraging step-wise pain management, and suggesting a wider role for adjuvant agents. Even the origins of the more current concept of opioid-sparing analgesia can probably be traced back to this WHO Step Ladder. The role of analgesic adjuvants in perioperative pain management, notably ketamine, lidocaine, and the gabapentinoids, continues to be explored. In most situations, the use of these drugs allows for further significant decrease in the requirement or reliance on opioids for adequate …
On the time arrows, and randomness in cosmological signals

Arrows of time - thermodynamical, cosmological, electromagnetic, quantum mechanical, psychological - are basic properties of Nature. For a quantum system-bath closed system the de-correlated initial conditions and no-memory (Markovian) dynamics are outlined as necessary conditions for the appearance of the thermodynamical arrow. The emergence of the arrow for the system evolving according to non-unitary dynamics due to the presence of the bath, then, is a result of limited observability, and we conjecture the arrow in the observable Universe as determined by the dark sector acting as a bath. The voids in the large scale matter distribution induce hyperbolicity of the null geodesics, with possible observational consequences.
System-size Convergence of Nonthermal Particle Acceleration in Relativistic Plasma Turbulence

We apply collisionless particle-in-cell simulations of relativistic pair plasmas to explore whether driven turbulence is a viable high-energy astrophysical particle accelerator. We characterize nonthermal particle distributions for varying system sizes up to L/2πρe0 = 163, where L/2π is the driving scale and ρe0 is the initial characteristic Larmor radius. We show that turbulent particle acceleration produces power-law energy distributions that, when compared at a fixed number of large-scale dynamical times, slowly steepen with increasing system size. We demonstrate, however, that convergence is obtained by comparing the distributions at different times that increase with system size (approximately logarithmically). We suggest that the system-size dependence arises from the time required for particles to reach the highest accessible energies via Fermi acceleration. The converged power-law index of the energy distribution, α ≈ 3.0 for magnetization σ = 3/8, makes turbulence a possible explanation for nonthermal spectra observed in systems such as the Crab Nebula.
Amharic Speech Recognition for Speech Translation

The state-of-the-art speech translation can be seen as a cascade of Automatic Speech Recognition, Statistical Machine Translation and Text-To-Speech synthesis. In this study an attempt is made to experiment on Amharic speech recognition for Amharic-English speech translation in tourism domain. Since there is no Amharic speech corpus, we developed a read-speech corpus of 7.43hr in tourism domain. The Amharic speech corpus has been recorded after translating standard Basic Traveler Expression Corpus (BTEC) under a normal working environment. In our ASR experiments phoneme and syllable units are used for acoustic models, while morpheme and word are used for language models. Encouraging ASR results are achieved using morpheme-based language models and phoneme-based acoustic models with a recognition accuracy result of 89.1%, 80.9%, 80.6%, and 49.3% at character, morph, word and sentence level respectively. We are now working towards designing Amharic-English speech translation through cascading components under different error correction algorithms.
Bedload transport in bedrock rivers : the role of sediment cover in grain 1 entrainment , translation and deposition 2

up to 250 words) 19 Bedrock rivers exert a critical control over landscape evolution, yet little is known 20 about the sediment transport processes that affect their incision. We present 21 theoretical analyses and field data that demonstrate how grain entrainment, translation 22 and deposition are affected by the degree of sediment cover in a bedrock channel. 23 Theoretical considerations of grain entrainment mechanics and sediment continuity 24 each demonstrate that areas of exposed bedrock and thin sediment depths cause 25 sediment transport to be size-independent, albeit excluding extreme grain sizes. We 26 report gravel and cobble magnetic tracer data from three rivers with contrasting 27 sediment cover: the bedrock River Calder (20 % cover), the bedrock South Fork Eel 28 River (80 %) and the alluvial Allt Dubhaig (100 %). These datasets show that: 1) 29 transport distances in the River Calder are controlled by sediment patch location, 30 whereas in the other rivers transport distances are described by gamma distributions 31 representing local dispersion; 2) River Calder transport distances are size-independent 32 across all recorded shear stresses, whereas the other rivers display size-selectivity; 3) 33 River Calder tracers are entrained at a dimensionless shear stress of 0.038, which is 34 relatively low compared to alluvial rivers; and, 4) virtual grain velocities in the River 35 Calder are higher than in a comparable reach of the Allt Dubhaig. These contrasts 36 result from differences in the thicknesses and spatial distribution of sediment in the 37 three rivers, and support the theoretical analysis. Sediment processes in bedrock rivers 38 systematically vary along a continuum between bedrock and alluvial end members. 39
Feature Analysis on the Containment Time for Cyber Security Incidents

Data mining techniques have been widely used as a common goal to discover hidden patterns from big data sets, so researchers have been motivated to make use of data in discovering useful information. The main contribution of this paper lies in its identifying relevant features from an open data set to predict the containment time of Cyber incidents. In particular, 13 relevant features were identified and selected to come up with a predictive model. Our results are discussed in the context of the organization‘s' information security.
Dissection of Protein Kinase Pathways in Live Cells Using Photoluminescent Probes: Surveillance or Interrogation?

Protein kinases catalyze phosphorylation, a small yet crucial modification that affects participation of the substrate proteins in the intracellular signaling pathways. The activity of 538 protein kinases encoded in human genome relies upon spatiotemporally controlled mechanisms, ensuring correct progression of virtually all physiological processes on the cellular level—from cell division to cell death. The aberrant functioning of protein kinases is linked to a wide spectrum of major health issues including cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, inflammatory diseases, etc. Hence, significant effort of scientific community has been dedicated to the dissection of protein kinase pathways in their natural milieu. The combination of recent advances in the field of light microscopy, the wide variety of genetically encoded or synthetic photoluminescent scaffolds, and the techniques for intracellular delivery of cargoes has enabled design of a plethora of probes that can report activation of target protein kinases in human live cells. The question remains: how much do we bias intracellular signaling of protein kinases by monitoring it? This review seeks answers to this question by analyzing different classes of probes according to their general structure, mechanism of recognition of biological target, and optical properties necessary for the reporting of intracellular events.
Radon impact in patients with broncho-pulmonary cancer in centre areas of Transylvania

Lung cancer is the most frequent cause of mortality caused by malignancies in the world. Radon, the second recognized carcinogenic agent involved in the development of lung cancer, after smoking, is a noble gas with a high mobility. By being continuously generated by soil sources of radium or from construction materials, it becomes omnipresent in our lives. Our objectives are: developing a regional radon laboratory; the establishment of local maps linked to radon exposure, the epidemiological investigation of patients with lung cancer in the centre counties of Transylvania, in correlation with the level of exposure to radon and cigarette smoke; tracking histopathological type of lung cancer in relation to radon exposure; studies on laboratory animals regarding the influence of radon dose and dose rate in the development of lung cancer. Once identify the elevated concentrations of radon in homes, it will be possible to installate a barrier at the ground floor of buildings that will prevent radon passage. Any effort to support the reduction of radon concentration in dwellings, as well as smoking cessation will increase health in population affected by these agents and will reduce the number of deaths due to lung cancer.
Revisiting optimal eavesdropping in quantum cryptography: Characterizing unitary evolutions for optimal interaction

The celebrated BB84 protocol was proposed in 1984 by Bennett and Brassard to distribute a secret key between two legitimate parties with a promise for unconditional security. An optimal unitary attack on this protocol using an ensemble of probes was first established by Fuchs et al. [Phys. Rev. A, 1997]. They derived the maximum information that could be learned by an eavesdropper, and specified an optimal interaction (post-interaction joint state) for that. Infinitely many such optimal interactions were derived by Acharyya et al. [Phys. Rev. A, 2017]. For practical purposes, all an eavesdropper needs to know is the specification of the optimal unitary evolution and the subsequent optimal measurement, as part of her optimal strategy. Finding an optimal unitary from a particular optimal post-interaction state is easy. But finding a closed form of the optimal unitaries for the whole family of optimal interactions is not so straightforward. Here we address this issue.
A Survey of Energy Aware Cloud’s Resource Allocation Techniques for Virtual Machine Consolidation

As the demand for cloud computing environment is increasing, new techniques for making cloud computing more environment-friendly are being proposed with an aim to convert traditional cloud computing into green cloud computing. A standout amongst the most imperative complications in cloud computing is streamlining of energy utilization because its importance is increasing rapidly. There are numerous strategies and algorithms used to limit the energy utilization in the cloud. Methods incorporate DVFS, UP-VMC, Utility based MFF, HCT, AVVMC, ACO, and ESWCT. In this survey, a review of energy-aware techniques is presented for making virtual machines more energy efficient in a cloud computing. Working on each technique is briefly explained. A comparative analysis is also given for comparing multiple efficient techniques with respect to performance metrics.
uropean materia medica in historical texts : Longevity of a tradition and mplications for future use aula

Aim of the study: This study uses historical texts in order to obtain information on the natural products used in traditional medicines in European/Mediterranean therapeutics over the last two millennia. The information obtained may lead to new directions in the area of drug discovery, as recent research has demonstrated the continued promise of looking to natural products for bioactive compounds. Researchers have increasingly turned to traditional medicines to provide clues as to which natural products to investigate, but the oral traditions on which much of this medical knowledge rests are often unstable. Thus researchers have been prompted to use historical medical texts, as this study does, to find potential sources of new drugs. Materials and methods: This study uses twelve Mediterranean/European medical texts from the 5th century BC to the 19th century AD to compile a list of the most commonly used “simples” or single action drugs substances used in therapeutics in traditional European medicine. This list was then compared to present-day herbal pharmacopoeia as represented by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Results: This study finds that traditional European materia medica was based on a Dioscoridean tradition that lasted through the 19th century with remarkably little variation, but is significantly different from the present-day herbal pharmacopoeia according to the NIH. Conclusions: The most prominent simples in the European/Mediterranean medical tradition can provide comp in the clues to futher bioactive were clearly of great use