Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Advanced plasma sources for the future 450mm etch process

In this paper, we have introduced various plasma source concepts for large-area plasma processing with a brief review of the experimental and simulation results. A multi-radio-frequency (RF) feed design, multi-electrode concepts are suggested to enhance the plasma uniformity, and, a multi-ICP source is introduced for large-area, ultra-low pressure processes to remove standing-wave and skin effects causing the processing output to be non-uniform. Using multi-feeds to connect separated electrodes in a multi-electrode is one method of uniformity control. A multi-plasma source can also be used to increase the plasma uniformity, which makes it possible to enlarge the processing area. A parallel array of the ICP sources can decrease the total impedance of the system and enable a high electron density to be achieved. We discussed the asymmetric factors including the chamber wall potential profile, stray capacitance, and gas distribution. Finally some issues regarding the control of the plasma parameters through adjustment of the excitation frequency and RF power, operating pressure, gas mixing ratio, and other external parameters to optimize large-area plasma processing are mentioned.
Information Management for Concurrent Engineering: Research Issues

The development of products in large industrial organizations involves numerous engineers from different disciplines working on interdependent components Objectives are sometimes in conflict The need for overall coordination, consistency, control, and integrity of data, design ideas, and design rationale is critical The information generated by each designer must be viewed in the context of information generated by other designers, the enterpnse historical data, and the organization as a whole. The paper outlines major requirements facing concurrent engineering (CE) It focuses on the ability of collaborating designers to proceed independently, correlate interdependency, use existing information (data, knowledge, and processes), and negotiate conflicts arising from design inconsistencies To provide information-based support for such environments a concept of design schemata is introduced to support the concurrent, collaborative, and historical aspects of CE environments from an enterprise perspective. The need for a data dictionary that supports these schemata and its different dimensions is also recognized The dictionary provides conceptual centralization of design information relative to the enterprise. This includes data, as well as its definition (meta-data), and must allow the design process to evolve in a global enterprise perspective These discussions lead to a series of research issues that must be addressed by the CE research community.
Advanced Meditation Alters Resting-State Brain Network Connectivity Correlating With Improved Mindfulness

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an intensive 8-day Samyama meditation program on the brain functional connectivity using resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI). Methods: Thirteen Samyama program participants (meditators) and 4 controls underwent fMRI brain scans before and after the 8-day residential meditation program. Subjects underwent fMRI with a blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) contrast at rest and during focused breathing. Changes in network connectivity before and after Samyama program were evaluated. In addition, validated psychological metrics were correlated with changes in functional connectivity. Results: Meditators showed significantly increased network connectivity between the salience network (SN) and default mode network (DMN) after the Samyama program (p < 0.01). Increased connectivity within the SN correlated with an improvement in self-reported mindfulness scores (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Samyama, an intensive silent meditation program, favorably increased the resting-state functional connectivity between the salience and default mode networks. During focused breath watching, meditators had lower intra-network connectivity in specific networks. Furthermore, increased intra-network connectivity correlated with improved self-reported mindfulness after Samyama. Clinical Trials Registration: [https://clinicaltrials.gov], Identifier: [NCT04366544]. Registered on 4/17/2020.
Hepatectomy-Induced Alterations in Hepatic Perfusion and Function - Toward Multi-Scale Computational Modeling for a Better Prediction of Post-hepatectomy Liver Function

Liver resection causes marked perfusion alterations in the liver remnant both on the organ scale (vascular anatomy) and on the microscale (sinusoidal blood flow on tissue level). These changes in perfusion affect hepatic functions via direct alterations in blood supply and drainage, followed by indirect changes of biomechanical tissue properties and cellular function. Changes in blood flow impose compression, tension and shear forces on the liver tissue. These forces are perceived by mechanosensors on parenchymal and non-parenchymal cells of the liver and regulate cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions as well as cellular signaling and metabolism. These interactions are key players in tissue growth and remodeling, a prerequisite to restore tissue function after PHx. Their dysregulation is associated with metabolic impairment of the liver eventually leading to liver failure, a serious post-hepatectomy complication with high morbidity and mortality. Though certain links are known, the overall functional change after liver surgery is not understood due to complex feedback loops, non-linearities, spatial heterogeneities and different time-scales of events. Computational modeling is a unique approach to gain a better understanding of complex biomedical systems. This approach allows (i) integration of heterogeneous data and knowledge on multiple scales into a consistent view of how perfusion is related to hepatic function; (ii) testing and generating hypotheses based on predictive models, which must be validated experimentally and clinically. In the long term, computational modeling will (iii) support surgical planning by predicting surgery-induced perfusion perturbations and their functional (metabolic) consequences; and thereby (iv) allow minimizing surgical risks for the individual patient. Here, we review the alterations of hepatic perfusion, biomechanical properties and function associated with hepatectomy. Specifically, we provide an overview over the clinical problem, preoperative diagnostics, functional imaging approaches, experimental approaches in animal models, mechanoperception in the liver and impact on cellular metabolism, omics approaches with a focus on transcriptomics, data integration and uncertainty analysis, and computational modeling on multiple scales. Finally, we provide a perspective on how multi-scale computational models, which couple perfusion changes to hepatic function, could become part of clinical workflows to predict and optimize patient outcome after complex liver surgery.
Transmitter cost/efficiency exploration for 5-GHz WLAN

Wireless LAN systems target wireless communications for demanding multimedia applications in several types of environments. While meeting many transmitter and receiver specifications, designing a low-cost, efficient and portable system covering this whole design space becomes infeasible. Therefore we developed a methodology that translates this multitude of requirements into a system covering a part of the design space, but still attractive from an application point of view and with an optimal performance/cost-ratio. As a result, we show that there is only a limited set of applications that can be covered by a 5-GHz wireless LAN mobile terminal with 16 dBm average output power. Instead a mobile terminal with 23 dBm average output power can work in more scenarios. Further we show that implementing a more efficient power amplifier architecture has limited impact on the system efficiency in the 16-dBm system-on-chip (SoC) case, however this becomes crucial for integration of a 23-dBm mobile terminal using a system-in-a-package (SiP) approach.
The Bacterial Mucosal Immunotherapy MV130 Protects Against SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Improves COVID-19 Vaccines Immunogenicity

COVID-19-specific vaccines are efficient prophylactic weapons against SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, boosting innate responses may represent an innovative way to immediately fight future emerging viral infections or boost vaccines. MV130 is a mucosal immunotherapy, based on a mixture of whole heat-inactivated bacteria, that has shown clinical efficacy against recurrent viral respiratory infections. Herein, we show that the prophylactic intranasal administration of this immunotherapy confers heterologous protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection in susceptible K18-hACE2 mice. Furthermore, in C57BL/6 mice, prophylactic administration of MV130 improves the immunogenicity of two different COVID-19 vaccine formulations targeting the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein, inoculated either intramuscularly or intranasally. Independently of the vaccine candidate and vaccination route used, intranasal prophylaxis with MV130 boosted S-specific responses, including CD8+-T cell activation and the production of S-specific mucosal IgA antibodies. Therefore, the bacterial mucosal immunotherapy MV130 protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection and improves COVID-19 vaccines immunogenicity.
A modified belief functions distance measure for orderable set

This paper proposes a new method of measuring the distance between conflicting order sets, quantifying the similarity between focal elements and their own size. This method can effectively measure the conflict of belief functions on an ordered set without saturation due to the non-overlapping focus elements. It has proven that the method satisfies the property of the distance. Examples of the engineering budget and sensors show that the distance can effectively measure the conflict between ordered sets, and prove the distance we propose to reflect the information of order sets more comprehensively by comparison with existing methods, and the conflict metric between ordered sets is more robust and accurate.
Neutrosophic Data Envelopment Analysis: An Application to Regional Hospitals in Tunisia

In many real-life situations, decision-making units (DMUs)—such as production processes or manufacturing or service systems—involve data related to inputs and outputs that are volatile, imprecise, or even missing. This makes it difficult to measure these DMUs’ efficiency. In this context, a data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a powerful methodology to facilitate this measurement, but this is also sensitive to data: any noise or error in the data measurement can easily cause non-applicable or insignificant results. The neutrosophic theory has demonstrated its superiority over other approaches and theories in handling this type of data, and especially in its capability to consider indeterminate data. However, in the DEA context, the use of this theory remains limited to a few theoretical works. In order to filling this gap, the present paper aims to highlight the neutrosophic DEA in a real-life application. Two different neutrosophic approaches, or namely, the ranking and parametric approaches, are adjusted then applied to measure and evaluate the efficiency of 32 regional hospitals in Tunisia. These results allow a comparison of these two approaches, but more importantly, they reveal the desired efficiency measurement that permits inefficient hospitals’ necessary actions. Consequently, indeterminate inputs and outputs are no longer a handicap in using the DEA.
Nutritional Management Approach for Possible Prevention of COVID-19 Infection and Transmission in Sub-Saharan and Biodiversity Endowed Countries

The causative etiology of the viral pneumonia outbreak in the Wuhan province of China of December 2019 initially identified as “novel-Coronavirus-2019” and today called “Corona Virus Disease-2019 has been identified as “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2)”. Tireless efforts have therefore been invested to elaborate a treatment and/ or vaccine though with much controversy due to the lack of proper mastery of the structure, mode of action, mutation, recombination and transmission mechanism of the virus. Numerous public health measures have thus been imposed to slow down the rate of invasion and/or transmission (regular hand washing, face mask wearing, quarantine as well as method of diagnosis and symptomatic treatment) and now a convinent and acceptable treatment protocol and/ or vaccine. With the difficulties encountered in the development of an effective and efficient control and / or preventive towards the virus even in the western world, countries in sub-Saharan Africa, especially those in the tropics like Cameroon will endure sigficant consequences due to limited funds, technology, equipment and experts. It is therefore imperative to exploit other possibilities as the recombination rate and mutation possibilities within the genome of SARS-CoV-2 is indicative that, the 2019 outbreak was just a tip of the iceberg as more virulent variants beyond Delta variants, are still to emerge. One of such suitable and affordable possibilities is to nutritionally fortify and prepared the body to fight against infection. Zinc, Copper and Sellenium are essential micronutrients with demonstrated viral chelating activities found in selected commond foods which in adequate amounts will strengthen the immune system and tonify the body energy. A non-exhaustive list of common foods rich in the indicated micronutrients as well as those endowed with antioxidant and antimicrobial properties have been established from an extensive literature search in order to emphasize on the regular consumption.
Explaining Machine Learning by Bootstrapping Partial Dependence Functions and Shapley Values

Machine learning and artificial intelligence methods are often referred to as “black boxes” when compared to traditional regression-based approaches. However both traditional and machine learning methods are concerned with modeling the joint distribution between endogenous (target) and exogenous (input) variables. The fitted models are themselves functionals of the data, about which we can do statistical inference using computationally intensive methods such as the bootstrap. Where linear models describe the fitted relationship between the target and input variables via the slope of that relationship (coefficient estimates), the same fitted relationship can be described rigorously for any machine learning model by first-differencing the partial dependence functions. Bootstrapping these first-differenced functionals provides standard errors and confidence intervals for the estimated relationships. We show that this approach replicates the point estimates of coefficients attained in a linear OLS models, and demonstrate how this generalizes to marginal relationships in ML/AI models. This paper extends the partial dependence plot ∗Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Email: thomas.cook@kc.frb. org †The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or the Federal Reserve System. ‡Federal Reserve Board of Governors §Federal Reserve Board of Governors Email: nathan.m. palmer@frb.gov
Power system frequency response from fixed speed and doubly fed induction generator-based wind turbines

Throughout Europe there is an increasing trend of connecting high penetrations of wind turbines to the transmission networks. This has resulted in transmission system operators revising their grid code documents for the connection of large wind farms. These specifications require large MW capacity wind farms to have the ability to assist in some of the power system control services currently carried out by conventional synchronous generation. These services include voltage and frequency control. It is now recognized that much of this new wind generation plant will use either fixed speed induction generator (FSIG)- or doubly fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind turbines. The addition of a control loop to synthesize inertia in the DFIG wind turbine using the power electronic control system has been described. The possibility of deloading wind turbines for frequency response using blade pitch angle control is discussed. A pitch control scheme to provide frequency response from FSIG and DFIG wind turbines is also described. A case study of an FSIG wind turbine with frequency response capabilities is investigated. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
ULPD and CPTL Pull-Up Stages for Differential Cascode Voltage Switch Logic

Two new structures for Differential Cascode Voltage Switch Logic (DCVSL) pull-up stage are proposed. In conventional DCVSL structure, low-to-high propagation delay is larger than high-to-low propagation delay this could be brought down by using DCVSL-R. Promoting resistors in DCVSL-R structure increase the parasitic effects and unavoidable delay and it also occupies more area on the chip (Turker et al., 2011). In order to minimize these problems, a new Ultra-Low-Power Diode (ULPD) structures in place of resistors have been suggested. This provides the minimum parasitic effects and reduces area on the chip. Second proposed circuit uses Complementary Pass Transistor Logic (CPTL) structure, which provides complementary outputs. This contributes an alternate circuit for conventional DCVSL structure. The performances of the proposed circuits are examined using Cadence and the model parameters of a 180 nm CMOS process. The simulation results of these two circuits are compared and presented. These circuits are found to be suitable for VLSI implementation.
Control of shape memory alloy actuator using pulse width modulation

Shape memory alloys (SMA), in particular nickel–titanium alloy (or nitinol), have been used as actuators in some astronautic, aeronautic and industrial applications. The future will see more SMA application if less energy is required for actuation. This paper presents the design and experimental results of control of an SMA actuator using pulse width modulation (PWM) to reduce the energy consumption by the SMA actuator. A SMA wire test stand is used in this research. Open-loop testing of the SMA wire actuator is conducted to study the effect of the PWM parameters. Based on test results and parameter analysis of the pulse width (PW) modulator, a PW modulator is designed to modulate a proportional plus derivative (PD) controller. Experiments demonstrate that control of the SMA actuator using PWM effectively saves actuation energy while maintaining the same control accuracy as compared to continuous PD control. PWM also demonstrates robustness to external disturbances. A comparison with a pulse width pulse frequency modulator is also presented.
JAVASCRIPT SOFTVERSKO REŠENJE ZA OBRADU SLIKE

: Image processing is an integral part of modern multimedia communications. The idea of this paper is to create a new software solution for image processing, from the beginning, using the JavaScript programming language. In the first part of the software solution, the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) for a randomly generated matrix with 8x8 pixels is determined. DCT coefficients are visually represented on the graph. In the second part, the user can select an arbitrary image from the computer, get corresponding information and start processing. Various image effects (red, green, blue) and special effects are available, such as: rotation, horizontal and vertical rotation, cropping, image compression, comparison of results before and after compression, URL generation links for input and compressed images, with other options as well. The software solution can be run directly from a web browser or installed on the desired operating system.
Microwave dielectric properties of anisotropic materials at cryogenic temperatures

The permittivity and dielectric loss tangent of cross-linked polystyrene (Rexolite), polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon), and single-crystal quartz were measured at microwave frequencies and at temperatures of 77 K and 300 K using a dielectric resonator technique. Dielectric loss tangents as low as 7/spl times/10/sup -6/ at 77 K were determined by applying high-temperature superconducting (HTS) films as the endplates of the dielectric resonator. Two permittivity tensor components for uniaxially anisotropic crystalline quartz were measured. Although the permittivities at 77 K changed very little from their room temperature values at 300 K, large changes in dielectric losses were observed. The decreased losses of these microelectronic substrates can markedly improve the performance of many microwave devices at cryogenic temperatures. >
Genome-wide CRISPR screening reveals novel therapeutic targets in RIT1-driven lung cancer

ABSTRACT In recent work, we performed CRISPR/Cas9 screening in RIT1 (Ras-like in all tissues)-mutant cancer cells. We found that RIT1-mutant cells are vulnerable to loss of mitotic regulators, and mutant RIT1 synergizes with YAP1 (yes-associated protein 1) in oncogenesis. These findings can be leveraged to identify targeted therapies for RIT1-mutant cancer.
Bench Research Informed by GWAS Results

Scientifically interesting as well as practically important phenotypes often belong to the realm of complex traits. To the extent that these traits are hereditary, they are usually ‘highly polygenic’. The study of such traits presents a challenge for researchers, as the complex genetic architecture of such traits makes it nearly impossible to utilise many of the usual methods of reverse genetics, which often focus on specific genes. In recent years, thousands of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were undertaken to explore the relationships between complex traits and a large number of genetic factors, most of which are characterised by tiny effects. In this review, we aim to familiarise ‘wet biologists’ with approaches for the interpretation of GWAS results, to clarify some issues that may seem counterintuitive and to assess the possibility of using GWAS results in experiments on various complex traits.
An Experimental Determination of Human Hand Accuracy with a DataGlove

A three-part experiment was conducted to determine the accuracy, repeatability and linearity of a human hand manipulating the DataGlove. Accuracy and repeatability of finger flexure were investigated with repeated measurements of three calibration positions. Linearity of finger flexure was investigated with steady finger and thumb curling motions. Accuracy and repeatability of hand location and orientation were investigated with repeated measurements of six hand positions. Finger flexure mean accuracy was 6º for the four fingers and 11º for the thumb, repeatability was 3º for the four fingers and 9º for the thumb, and linearity varied from 2 to 5º. Although the mean location accuracy was 1 inch and the mean orientation accuracy was 17º, the position and orientation receiver was observed to twist on the glove back. Across all subjects, the location repeatability was 0.5 inch, while the orientation repeatability was 9º. However, the within-subject location repeatability was 0.13 inches, while the orientation repeatability was 2º.
STABILITY ANALYSIS FOR SANDWICH SYSTEMS WITH BACKLASH: AN LMI APPROACH

Abstract This paper addresses the problem of stability analysis for a certain class of nonlinear systems resulting from a sandwiched backlash operator in the connection of a plant and an actuator device. Constructive conditions based on LMIs to ensure the stability of the sandwich system are proposed by using some suitable Lyapunov functions and generalized sector conditions. The associated set of all the admissible equilibrium points is precisely defined. Extensions to the case where some parameters of the backlash nonlinearity are uncertain are provided.