Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reliability considerations and radiation testing of memristor devices

Resistive random access memories (RRAM) can be made of a variety of materials, including metal oxides and metal-doped chalcogenides, that exhibit memristive behavior. RRAMs have been identified as a leading candidate to replace flash memory and may also be suitable as replacements for other types of memory, including DRAM and SRAM. When sandwiched between two electrodes, specially grown thin films can be switched with applied bias between a high (off ) and a low resistance (on) state. Since 2007, these devices have been considered as candidates for space applications due to their device properties. There is a high density of inherent defects in the as-fabricated devices, which is likely to contribute to their tolerance to displacement damage. In addition, the nanometer length scale of the active device layers allows the devices to dissipate the charge deposited from ionizing dose. However, the testing of devices over several different radiation studies has revealed potential reliability concerns, including device to device variation, device sensitivity to measurements and physical device changes that occur with cycling between states. In this paper, we will discuss these concerns and present initial results of biased radiation testing of TaOx and TiO2 devices with ionizing radiation.
A Circularly Polarized High-Gain Antenna With Low RCS Over a Wideband Using Chessboard Polarization Conversion Metasurfaces

A new approach for the gain enhancement and wideband radar cross section (RCS) reduction of an antenna based on the chessboard polarization conversion metasurfaces (CPCMs) is proposed. Compared with the previous low-RCS antennas, high gain and wideband low RCS of a circularly polarized (CP) antenna are achieved simultaneously. The proposed CPCM is the chessboard configuration of the polarization conversion metasurfaces (PCMs), which is made up of adjoining two-layer substrates with three metallic patterns. Low RCS is realized by 180° (±30°) reflection phase variations between two neighboring PCMs. Gain enhancement is achieved by employing a Fabry-Perot cavity, which is constructed by the PCM and the ground of the antenna. The antenna with CPCM operating at the $X$ -band, excited by a sequentially rotated feeding network, is fabricated and measured. Simulated and measured results show that the left-hand CP gain of the antenna with CPCM is at least 3 dB higher than that of the reference antenna from 8.5 to 9.5 GHz and the monostatic RCS is effectively reduced from 6 to 14 GHz.
Mining E-commercial data: A text-rich heterogeneous network embedding approach

It is a great challenge to model and mine the e-commercial data, which is made up of multiple types of objects, such as products, users, comments and tags. To model the complicated interactive relationships in the the e-commercial data, we propose to transform the complex e-commercial data into a text-rich heterogeneous e-commercial network. Then three neural network based embedding algorithms named WTL (Weighted Text Learning), IBL (Identity Based Learning) and IBTSL (Identity Based Two Steps Learning) are proposed to consider both the network structure information and heterogeneous nodes attributes identity information to learn the embeddings. The key idea of our models is to map all objects in the e-commercial network to a same low-dimensional vector space, which is useful to produce meaningful features for many applications such as product classification, comment classification, product attributes forecasting, recommendation, and so on. Our algorithms are compared with other existing advanced methods on a real large-scale e-commercial dataset. Several applications are set to evaluate the effectivity of the learned embeddings. The experimental results show that the embeddings generated by our algorithms have superior performance in each application.
The influence of neighborhood size and habitat shape on the accumulation of deleterious mutations.

To examine the impact of genetic neighborhood size and habitat shape on genetic load and the accumulation of deleterious mutation, individual-based simulations were performed in continuously distributed habitats. The risk of extinction increased as both the area of the habitat and the neighborhood size decreased. When the neighborhood area became smaller than the habitat area, habitat shape also began to influence the risk of extinction by mutation loads, expected time to extinction being shorter in longer and narrower habitats than in a square habitat. Both the number of homozygous deleterious loci per individual and the mutation load in the population increased as the neighborhood size and total population size decreased. Neighborhood size and total population size both independently affected the average number of homozygous deleterious loci per individual. In addition, as the ratio of the long to the short side of the rectangle of a habitat increased, the average number of homozygous deleterious loci increased. When the areas of the habitats were held constant, the average number of homozygous loci and the mutation loads were smallest for a regular square and largest for the longest, narrowest habitat. These results suggest that the spatial genetic structure of an individual is an important factor in the accumulation of deleterious mutations and the risk of extinction by mutation meltdown.
Gene in the major cotransduction gap of the Escherichia coli K-12 linkage map required for the expression of chromosomal resistance to tetracycline and other antibiotics

In Escherichia coli K-12, amplifiable resistance to tetracycline, chloramphenicol, and other unrelated antibiotics was mediated by at least four spatially separated loci. Tetracycline-sensitive mutants were isolated by Tn5 insertional inactivation of an amplified multiply resistant strain. One of these, studied in detail, showed coordinate loss of expression of all other resistance phenotypes. The Tn5 element in this mutant mapped to 34 min on the E. coli K-12 linkage map. We have designated the locus marA (multiple antibiotic resistance). Tetracycline-sensitive mutants containing marA::Tn5 regained all resistance phenotypes at frequencies of 10(-8) to 10(-7) upon precise excision of Tn5. Moreover, a newly described tetracycline efflux system (A. M. George and S. B. Levy, J. Bacteriol. 155:531-540, 1983) was inactivated in tetracycline-sensitive mutants, but recovered in tetracycline-resistant revertants. In merodiploids, F-prime marA+ expressed partial or complete dominance over corresponding mutant chromosomal alleles. Dominance tests also established that a previously amplified host and a mutant marA allele were preconditions for the expression of phenotypic resistances.
Long Short-Term Memory With Quadratic Connections in Recursive Neural Networks for Representing Compositional Semantics

Long short-term memory (LSTM) has been widely used in different applications, such as natural language processing, speech recognition, and computer vision over recurrent neural network (RNN) or recursive neural network (RvNN)—a tree-structured RNN. In addition, the LSTM-RvNN has been used to represent compositional semantics through the connections of hidden vectors over child units. However, the linear connections in the existing LSTM networks are incapable of capturing complex semantic representations of natural language texts. For example, complex structures in natural language texts usually denote intricate relationships between words, such as negated sentiment or sentiment strengths. In this paper, quadratic connections of the LSTM model is proposed in terms of RvNNs (abbreviated as qLSTM-RvNN) in order to attack the problem of representing compositional semantics. The proposed qLSTM-RvNN model is evaluated in the benchmark data sets containing semantic compositionality, i.e., sentiment analysis on Stanford Sentiment Treebank and semantic relatedness on sentences involving compositional knowledge data set. Empirical results show that it outperforms the state-of-the-art RNN, RvNN, and LSTM networks in two semantic compositionality tasks by increasing the classification accuracies and sentence correlation while significantly decreasing computational complexities.
Cross‐priming utilizes antigen not available to the direct presentation pathway

CD8+ T cells play a crucial role in protective immunity to viruses and tumours. Antiviral CD8+ T cells are initially activated by professional antigen presenting cells (pAPCs) that are directly infected by viruses (direct‐priming) or following uptake of exogenous antigen transferred from virus‐infected or tumour cells (cross‐priming). In order to efficiently target each of these antigen‐processing pathways during vaccine design, it is necessary to delineate the properties of the natural substrates for either of these antigen‐processing pathways. In this study, we utilized a novel T‐cell receptor (TCR) transgenic mouse to examine the requirement for both antigen synthesis and synthesis of other cellular factors during direct or cross‐priming. We found that direct presentation required ongoing synthesis of antigen, but that cross‐priming favoured long‐lived antigens and did not require ongoing antigen production. Even after prolonged blockade of protein synthesis in the donor cell, cross‐priming was unaffected. In contrast, direct‐presentation was almost undetectable in the absence of antigen neosynthesis and required ongoing protein synthesis. This suggests that the direct‐ and cross‐priming pathways may utilize differing pools of antigen, an observation that has far‐reaching implications for the rational design of vaccines aimed at the generation of protective CD8+ T cells.
Influence of storage approaches on instability of propiconazole resistance in Monilinia fructicola.

BACKGROUND The long-term preservation of interesting phenotypes in plant pathogenic fungi allows for follow-up studies in the future. Twelve storage approaches were investigated to determine their effects on instability of propiconazole resistance for three demethylation inhibitor (DMI) fungicide-resistant and two DMI-sensitive isolates of Monilinia fructicola. They included mycelium in PDA slants under mineral oil, in PDA plugs under 10% glycerol, on dried filter paper and conidia on silica gel, each stored for 36 weeks at 4, - 20, and - 80 °C. RESULTS None of the storage approaches prevented the rapid decline of EC(50) values for propiconazole in the three resistant isolates, and no significant differences were found among storage approaches (P = 0.787) or between storage approaches and consecutive transfers (P = 0.053). Most of the decline in resistance occurred during the first 4 weeks of storage. The DMI resistance-associated genetic element Mona, located in the immediate upstream region of the MfCYP51 gene, was still present in the three resistant isolates after 36 weeks of storage and weekly transfers. Furthermore, the Mona element and a portion of the MfCYP51 gene, which encodes the target enzyme for DMIs, did not reveal signs of DNA methylation. Resistance to propiconazole was partially regained in resistant isolates after two growth cycles on fresh peach fruit. CONCLUSIONS Obtained data indicate that the decline of DMI resistance in M. fructicola cannot be prevented using commonly employed storage methods at various temperatures. The number of consecutive transfers and the storage duration prior to fungicide sensitivity tests in M. fructicola should be indicated in scientific papers.
Techniques for the recovery and identification of Cryptosporidium oocysts from stool specimens

Due to increasing numbers of patients with documented infections with Cryptosporidium and other coccidia, it is important for the physician and clinical laboratory to be aware of the appropriate diagnostic techniques necessary for organism recovery and identification. Although Cryptosporidium is found in the gastrointestinal tract, tissue biopsies may be insufficient for organism recovery; the examination of stool specimens is a noninvasive procedure and will provide better overall opportunities for organism recovery. Human clinical specimens were examined from 45 patients with confirmed cryptosporidiosis or suspected of having the infection. Tissue biopsy sections, fecal wet preparations, and permanent stained smears were examined. Stool specimens were submitted in 10% Formalin, 2.5% potassium dichromate, and polyvinyl alcohol and were examined for oocysts by using 15 different methods: phase-contrast and light microscopy; Sheather's sugar flotation; Formalin concentration techniques; 10% potassium hydroxide; Giemsa; trichrome; periodic acid-Schiff; modified periodic acid-Schiff; silver methenamine; acridine orange; auramine-rhodamine; Kinyoun acid-fast; Ziehl-Neelsen carbolfuchsin; and a modified acid-fast procedure. Each technique or combination of techniques was assessed by organism quantitation, organism morphology, and ease of visual recognition. Based on these comparative studies, the modified Ziehl-Neelsen carbolfuchsin stain on 10% Formalin-preserved stool is recommended for the recovery and identification of Cryptosporidium.
Convertase Inhibitory Properties of Staphylococcal Extracellular Complement-binding Protein*

The human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus secretes several complement evasion molecules to combat the human immune response. Extracellular complement-binding protein (Ecb) binds to the C3d domain of C3 and thereby blocks C3 convertases of the alternative pathway and C5 convertases via all complement pathways. Inhibition of C5 convertases results in complete inhibition of C5a generation and subsequent neutrophil migration. Here, we show that binding of Ecb to the C3d domain of C3b is crucial for inhibition of C5 convertases. Ecb does not interfere with substrate binding to convertases but prevents formation of an active convertase enzyme.
Adolescent Exposure of JWH-018 “Spice” Produces Subtle Effects on Learning and Memory Performance in Adulthood

The active components associated with the bio-designer drugs known variously as “Spice” or “K2” have rapidly gained in popularity among recreational users, forcing the United States Drug Enforcement Administration to classify these compounds as Schedule I drugs in the Spring of 2011. However, although there is some information about many of the synthetic cannabinoids used in Spice products, little is known about the consequences of the main constituent, (1-pentyl-3-(1-naphthoyl)indole; JWH-018), on neuropsychological development or behavior. In the present experiment, adolescent rats were given repeated injections of either saline or 100 μg/kg of JWH-018. Once the animals were 75 days of age, they were trained using tasks with spatial components of various levels of difficulty and a spatial learning set task. On early trials with water maze tasks of varying difficulty, the JWH-018 treated rats were impaired relative to controls. However, by the end of each phase of testing, drug and control animals were comparable, although on probe trials the drug-treated animals spent significantly less time in the target quadrant. In addition, the performance of the drug-treated rats was inferior to that of the control animals on a learning set task, suggesting some difficulty in adapting their responses to changing task demands. The results suggest that chronic exposure to this potent cannabinoid CB1 receptor agonist during adolescence is capable of producing a variety of subtle changes affecting spatial learning and memory performance in adulthood, well after the drug exposure period.
Application of a simplified FWM expression in mixed-fiber links

In this paper we discuss a simplified model which was derived for homogeneous optical links where all fiber spans are considered identical and its possible exploitation in heterogeneous optical links where the fiber spans can be different. This can be a practical scenario since combinations of different fiber types, i.e. single mode fiber (SMF) and non zero dispersion shifted fiber (NZDSF), are being used in deployed fiber optic systems. The proposed method is benchmarked against simulation results for different transmission scenarios showing very good accuracy in all examined cases.
Coexistence DNA of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and Babesia microti in Ixodes ricinus ticks from north-western Poland.

The tick Ixodes ricinus may carry microorganisms which cause serious human and animal diseases, i.a. , the Lyme disease (borreliosis), caused by the spirochaete Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and babesiosis, induced by the protozoan Babesia microti. Both microbe species may co-occur in the same and other species of the genus tick and produce a mixed infection in humans and animals. The major objective of the study was to identify DNA of B. burgdorferi and B. microti in the I. ricinus ticks collected in spring and autumn 1999 from 6 sites in north-western Poland. The microbial DNA was identified with polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The marker used to detect the B. burgdorferi s.l. DNA was a fragment of the fla gene encoding the protein flagellin, while the B. microti DNA was detected with a fragment of the gene encoding 16S rRNA. A total of 550, 1,160, and 385 tick adults, nymphs, and larvae, respectively, were examined. Among the 155 (7.4%) B. burgdorferi- infected ticks and the 130 (6.2%) infected with B. microti, mixed infection was detected in 0.6% of individuals. The prevalence of coinfection differed between the tick developmental stages. Coinfection was most prevalent (3.1%) in females, males and nymphs being less affected (0.4 and 0.2%, respectively). No coinfection was revealed in the tick larvae. The study described was the first of its kind to be conducted in the former District of Szczecin. For the phenomenon of microbial co-occurrence and related mixed infections to be properly evaluated, the research will be continued.
Activation of Protein Kinase C (cid:1) Inhibits the Two-pore Domain K (cid:2) Channel, TASK-1, Inducing Repolarization Abnormalities in Cardiac Ventricular Myocytes*

Activation of the platelet-activating factor (PAF) receptor leads to a decrease in outward current in murine ventricular myocytes by inhibiting the TASK-1 channel. TASK-1 carries a background or “leak” current and is a member of the two-pore domain potassium channel family. Its inhibition is sufficient to delay repolarization, causing prolongation of the action potential duration, and in some cases, early after depolarizations. We set out to determine the cellular mechanisms that control regulation of TASK-1 by PAF. Inhibition of TASK-1 via activation of the PAF receptor is protein kinase C (PKC)-dependent. Using isoform-specific PKC inhibitor or activator peptides in patch clamp experiments, we now demonstrate that activation of PKC (cid:1) is both necessary and sufficient to regulate murine TASK-1 current in a heterologous expression system and to induce repolarization abnormalities in isolated myocytes. Further-more, site-directed mutagenesis studies have identified threonine 381, in the C-terminal tail of murine TASK-1, as a critical residue in this regulation. Regulation of cardiac function depends on the appropriate cumulative activity of numerous ion channels in individual cardiomyocytes that are responsible for the sequential depolar-ization-repolarization cycle known as the action potential (AP). 1 the
Channel estimation for transmit diversity in time domain synchronous OFDM systems

As the key technology of the international Digital Television Terrestrial Broadcasting (DTTB) standard called Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast (DTMB), time domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) differs from classical cyclic prefix OFDM (CP-OFDM) by replacing CP with known pseudorandom noise (PN) sequence. Channel estimation is an essential component of single-antenna TDS-OFDM systems due to the interference problem over multipath channels, and the time-domain received PN sequence is used to accomplish this task. However, when transmit diversity is applied to TDS-OFDM, PN sequences passing through different channels will mix together at the receiver, so the conventional PN-based channel estimation is invalid any more due to more complex interferences. To realize transmit diversity for TDS-OFDM, the space-time-frequency (STF) orthogonal training sequence design and the corresponding space-frequency and space-time channel estimation methods over time-varying and frequency-selective channels are proposed in this paper. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is validated by the simulation results, which also demonstrate that the bit error rate (BER) performance close to the ideal channel state information case could be achieved as well.
Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy for Pediatric HIV Infection: A Qualitative Systematic Review With Recommendations for Research and Clinical Management

Although nonadherence to prescribed therapies is widespread, it is particularly problematic with highly active antiretroviral therapy for HIV infection. This review of >50 studies in the area of pediatric HIV infection revealed varying methods for assessing antiretroviral adherence with a wide range of estimates of adherence. Correlates of adherence could be grouped as those relating to the medication, the patient, and the caregiver/family, with many conflicting findings and a lack of theory guiding the research. Only 8 studies, mainly small feasibility or pilot investigations, evaluated highly active antiretroviral therapy adherence interventions in pediatric populations. We conclude with specific recommendations for assessment and clinical management of adherence and discuss directions for future research in this area.
The 48-Pictures Test: A two-alternative forced-choice recognition test for the detection of malingering

We tested the validity of the 48-Pictures Test, a 2-alternative forced-choice recognition test, in detecting exaggerated memory impairments. This test maximizes subjective difficulty, through a large number of stimuli and shows minimal objective difficulty. We compared 17 suspected malingerers to 39 patients with memory impairments (6 amnesic, 15 frontal lobe dysfunctions, 18 other etiologies), and 17 normal adults instructed to simulate malingering on three memory tests: the 48-Pictures Test, the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), and the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT). On the 48-Pictures Test, the clinical groups showed good recognition performance (amnesics: 85%; frontal dysfunction: 94%; other memory impairments: 97%), whereas the two simulator groups showed a poor performance (suspected malingerers: 62% correct; volunteer simulators 68% correct). The two other tests did not show a high degree of discrimination between the clinical groups and the simulator groups, except in 2 measures: the 2 simulator groups tended to show a performance decrement from the last recall trial to immediate recognition of the RAVLT and also performed better than the clinical groups on the immediate recall of the RCFT. A discriminant analysis with the latter 2 measures and the 48-Pictures Test correctly classified 96% of the participants. These results suggest that the 48-Pictures Test is a useful tool for the detection of possible simulated memory impairment and that when combined to the RAVLT recall–recognition difference score and to the immediate recall score on the RCFT can provide strong evidence of exaggerated memory impairment. (JINS, 1997, 3, 545–552.)