Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defect tolerant prefix adder design

This paper introduces a defect tolerant 64-bit Sklansky prefix adder, designed with the goal of increasing its reliability and extending its lifetime in the presence of hard faults. We consider defect tolerance for early transistor wear-out by exploring the design of fine-grained reconfigurable logic. The approach involves enabling spare processing elements to replace defective elements. Power gating techniques are used to disable faulty logic blocks and enable spare logic. Minimum sized transistors are used for spare processing elements to reduce area overhead, and simplify reconfiguration interconnect. The performance of the design is compared to a baseline, non-repairing design using the cost metrics of: area overhead, power consumption, and performance in the fault free and faulty case.
Outage Probability of Interference-limited Switch and Stay Diversity System over Gamma Shadowed Nakagami-m Fading Channels

Abstract In this paper, the outage performance of a dual-branch switch and stay combining (SSC) diversity receiver operating over composite multipath Nakagami-m fading/gamma shadowing channels in the presence of a co-channel interference is determined. For a single channel composite fading environment, we derive the new analytical expressions for the probability density function and cumulative distribution function of the instantaneous signal-to-interference (SIR) ratio that can be used as alternatives to the previously published results. In the case of non-identically distributed and power unbalanced SSC branches with arbitrary fading parameters, the outage performance is determined. The choice of optimal switching threshold in minimum outage probability sense is discussed. The results show the outage probability dependence on simultaneous effects of the SIR unbalancing, as well as multipath fading and shadowing severities. The analytical results are confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations.
A study of the factors affecting construction durations in Hong Kong

This is the second phase of an investigation into the significant factors influencing construction duration of projects in Hong Kong. The results of the first phase led to the conclusion that larger samples were justified to investigate further the discerned relationships. Expanded samples were obtained in this second phase by adding some reported data from Hong Kong projects to the original surveyed sample. The second phase of this study also further investigates the relationships between different project characteristic variables such as the construction duration, construction cost, total gross floor area and the number of storeys in the case of buildings. Moreover, a case study on plant utilization level and site labour productivity was carried out on a building site to explore the ‘micro-factors’ that affect construction durations. The findings are of importance to all construction industry participants as the derived models help to estimate the construction duration of a project on the basis of signi.
DEREGULATION INDUCED VOLATILITY OF AIRPORT TRAFFIC.

Airline deregulation is spreading worldwide and has important consequences for the planning, design, and management of airports. One important effect is that the overall traffic at an airport—and by extension its revenues—is much more volatile in a liberal environment. This is demonstrated by analysis of the US experience over the last 25 years. The increased risk thus associated with airport projects emphasizes the need to discard traditional, static master planning in favor of dynamic strategic planning.
Looking at Team Improvised Adaptation Through a Paradoxical Lens: The Role of Team Plasticity

When time is of the essence and teams face unexpected contextual changes, they must adapt quickly, sometimes even in real time, that is, they may have to improvise. This paper adopts an inductive approach to explore how teams decide to engage in improvised adaptation, and what happens during those processes for improvisation to be successful. The study analyzes improvisation from the perspective of paradox theory and identifies six paradoxical tensions driven by these contexts: deployment, development, temporal, procedural, structural, and behavioral tensions. We propose a dynamic equilibrium model of team improvised adaptation that leads to team plasticity. By properly managing the paradoxical tensions emerging from the convergence of design and execution, teams become more plastic and able to cope with sudden change. These findings contribute to adaptation and improvisation literatures by delving into the adaptation process under the temporal and material confluence of design and execution.
A Comparison of Organic Emissions from Hazardous Waste Incinerators Versus the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory Air Releases

Incineration is often the preferred technology for disposing of hazardous waste and remediating Superfund sites. The effective implementation of this technology is frequently impeded by strong public opposition to hazardous waste incineration (HWI). One of the reasons cited for this opposition is the perception that the emission of organics pose an unreasonable threat to human health. While numerous risk assessments for these facilities have demonstrated that the risks from the inhalation of HWI emissions are very low, this has not totally allayed some of the concerns. In order to put organic emissions in perspective, the mass of these emissions from the incineration of hazardous waste on a national scale has been estimated using “reasonable worst-case” assumptions and compared to the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) air releases. Comparisons were made for 15 carcinogenic organic compounds and 17 non-carcinogenic organic compounds. Ratios for all but one of these compound-specific HWI emissions to thei.
Oxypeucedanin and isoimperatorin extracted from Prangos ferulacea (L.) Lindl protect PC12 pheochromocytoma cells from oxidative stress and apoptosis induced by doxorubicin

Background and purpose: Doxorubicin (DOX) as a chemotherapeutic agent has been widely used in the treatment of various types of cancer. However, DOX exerts a toxic effect on normal tissues such as the brain. Furanocoumarins reduce the risk of cardiovascular and brain diseases because of their antioxidant activities. This study has been designed, for the first time, to evaluate the effect of known furanocoumarins oxypeucedanin and isoimperatorin extracted from Prangos ferulacea (L.) Lindl on oxidative stress and apoptosis induced by DOX toward pheochromocytoma cell line (PC12). Experimental approach: NMR and MASS spectrometers were used to characterize the isolated compounds. The protective effects of isolated compounds on DOX-induced cytotoxicity in PC12 cells were examined by MTT assay. PC12 cells were pretreated with oxypeucedanin and isoimperatorin for 2 and 21 h, respectively, subsequently exposure to DOX at IC50 concentration. Then, mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP), Bax and Bcl2 mRNA expressions, caspase-3 activation, and the generation of intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) were measured after 24 h. Findings/Results: Pretreatment with oxypeucedanin and isoimperatorin significantly decreased DOX-induced apoptosis through reduction of caspase-3 activity and ROS generation and an increase in MMP. In addition, our finding showed pretreatment with these compounds leads to regulation of Bcl-2. Conclusion and implications: Taken together our observation indicated that oxypeucedanin and isoimperatorin have a protective effect against apoptosis induced by DOX in PC12 cells by inhibition of ROS production.
Modelling of calcium ion (Ca +2 ) conductance in nerve membrane protein channel as memristive circuit element

It is proved that the variable conductance of calcium ions (Ca+2) through the nerve membrane protein channel, labelled as gCa, in the Morris-Lecar nerve membrane macro circuit model, can be further modelled as a voltage-dependent one port memristor element. In this representation of gCa as a memristor, properties of this nonlinear time invariant conductance are proven to be equivalent to the properties of Chua's memristive one-port model.
Aceptación tecnológica y adicción a las redes sociales en contextos obligatorios virtuales

El acceso a las nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación por parte de la población se han incrementado en los últimos años, lo que ha llevado a que estas se integren de manera natural a la vida diaria de las personas. El ámbito educativo y empresarial sin duda son los sectores que mayores beneficios han obtenido con estos avances, tanto en lo positivo como de lo negativo. El presente estudio tiene por finalidad analizar la relación entre la aceptación tecnológica y la adicción a las redes sociales en estudiantes universitarios de la ciudad de Arequipa, Perú. La población estuvo conformada por estudiantes del segundo ciclo de 46 escuelas profesionales de la Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa. Para la selección de la muestra se recurrió a un procedimiento no probabilístico incidental, seleccionando en total n=2470 estudiantes. Los instrumentos aplicados fueron el modelo de aceptación tecnológica (TAM), diseñada por Yong y el Cuestionario de Adicción a las Redes Sociales (ARS) de Escurra y Salas. Los resultados muestran que existe relación directa y baja entre la aceptación tecnológica y la adicción a las redes sociales dado que la correlación de Pearson es de . 211, el tamaño del efecto es de 0.4593 y la potencia estadística es de 0.997. Se concluye que existe correlación de tipo muy débil; sin embargo, el tamaño del efecto es grande y la potencia estadística, muy alta. Estos resultados permiten abrir nuevos espacios de estudio de estos fenómenos
Colorophone 2.0: A Wearable Color Sonification Device Generating Live Stereo-Soundscapes—Design, Implementation, and Usability Audit

The successful development of a system realizing color sonification would enable auditory representation of the visual environment. The primary beneficiary of such a system would be people that cannot directly access visual information—the visually impaired community. Despite the plethora of sensory substitution devices, developing systems that provide intuitive color sonification remains a challenge. This paper presents design considerations, development, and the usability audit of a sensory substitution device that converts spatial color information into soundscapes. The implemented wearable system uses a dedicated color space and continuously generates natural, spatialized sounds based on the information acquired from a camera. We developed two head-mounted prototype devices and two graphical user interface (GUI) versions. The first GUI is dedicated to researchers, and the second has been designed to be easily accessible for visually impaired persons. Finally, we ran fundamental usability tests to evaluate the new spatial color sonification algorithm and to compare the two prototypes. Furthermore, we propose recommendations for the development of the next iteration of the system.
Biosynthesis of Tetrapyrrole Cofactors by Bacterial Community Inhabiting Porphyrine-Containing Shale Rock (Fore-Sudetic Monocline)

This study describes for the first time the comprehensive characterization of tetrapyrrole cofactor biosynthetic pathways developed for bacterial community (BC) inhabiting shale rock. Based on the genomic and proteomic metadata, we have detailed the biosynthesis of siroheme, heme, cobalamin, and the major precursor uroporphyrinogen III by a deep BC living on a rock containing sedimentary tetrapyrrole compounds. The obtained results showed the presence of incomplete heme and cobalamin biosynthesis pathways in the studied BC. At the same time, the production of proteins containing these cofactors, such as cytochromes, catalases and sulfite reductase, was observed. The results obtained are crucial for understanding the ecology of bacteria inhabiting shale rock, as well as their metabolism and potential impact on the biogeochemistry of these rocks. Based on the findings, we hypothesize that the bacteria may use primary or modified sedimentary porphyrins and their degradation products as precursors for synthesizing tetrapyrrole cofactors. Experimental testing of this hypothesis is of course necessary, but its evidence would point to an important and unique phenomenon of the tetrapyrrole ring cycle on Earth involving bacteria.
A wide range monolithic pHEMT SPDT switch

In this study, we propose the design, fabrication, and measurement results of a −6 V single pole double throw (SPDT) switch in the frequency band of DC‐20 GHz. We use a pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) GaAs technology. This technology has a gate width of 0.15 μm and a cutoff frequency of 85 GHz. A high yield and good performance switch based on pHEMT transistor is presented for using in SPDT circuit. In this method, we can reduce the off mode capacitor of transistor (Coff) and optimize the transistor in switch mode. Therefore, this method increases the transistor isolation in “off” mode with no change in the resistance of transistor in “on” mode (Ron). Measurement results show that the insertion loss is 1 dB with variation of ±0.1 dB in the frequency bandwidth and its isolation is better than 35 dB. The linear power range of the circuit is 28 dBm. The chip size is 0.2 mm2 and very low power consumption of 25 μ w is achieved. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1454–1458, 2014
Compensator design for hysteresis of a stacked PZT actuator using a congruency-based hysteresis model

This paper proposes a rate-independent hysteresis compensator for a stacked PZT (lead zirconate titanate) actuator. From a congruency-based hysteresis (CBH) model which is derived from the inherent properties of this actuator, especially the congruency, a feedforward compensator associated with it is developed. The formulation of the proposed compensator is based on an assumption that the inverse operator also possesses the same properties as the CBH model does. This implies that the compensator also possesses properties such as the wiped-out loop closing between the consecutive control points and congruency. Consequently, the expressions for the compensator can be conducted by exploiting the equations for the CBH model in two cases of monotonic increase and monotonic decrease of input excitation. In order to assess the performance of the compensator, several experiments in both open-loop and closed-loop controls are undertaken. In the open-loop control experiment, the performance of the feedforward compensator using the CBH model is compared with the classical Preisach model-based one in three cases of reference waveforms. In the closed-loop control experiment, the proposed compensator is incorporated into a PID (proportional-integral-derivative) control system and the performance of this integrated system is then evaluated and compared to that of the PID with and without compensator.
Distinct evolution of infection-enhancing and neutralizing epitopes in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variants (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, lambda and mu) : a structural and molecular epidemiology study

Objectives. The efficiency of Covid-19 vaccination is determined by cellular and humoral immune responses, and for the latter, by the balance between neutralizing and infection-enhancing antibodies. Here we analyzed the evolution of neutralizing and facilitating epitopes in the spike protein among SARS-CoV-2 variants. Methods. Amino acid alignments were performed on 929,203 spike sequences over the 4 last months. Molecular modeling studies of the N-terminal domain (NTD) and rod-like regions of the spike protein were performed on a representative panel of SARS-CoV-2 variants that were structurally compared with the original Wuhan strain. Results. D614, which belongs to an antibody-dependent-enhancement (ADE) epitope common to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, has rapidly mutated to D614G in the first months of 2020, explaining why ADE has not been detected following mass vaccination. We show that this epitope is conformationally linked to the main ADE epitope of the SARS-CoV-2 NTD which is highly conserved among most variants. In contrast, the neutralizing epitope of the NTD showed extensive variations in SARS-CoV-2 variants. Conclusions. This molecular epidemiology study coupled with structural analysis of the spike protein indicates that the balance between facilitating and neutralizing antibodies in vaccinated people is in favor of neutralization for the Wuhan strain,alpha and beta variants, but not for gamma, delta, lambda and mu. The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has dramatically affected the ADE/neutralization balance which is nowadays in favor of ADE. Future vaccines should consider these data to design new formulations adapted to SARS-CoV-2 variants and lacking ADE epitopes in the spike protein.
Scatter From Optical Components: An Overview

Although optical scatter is a source of noise, limits resolution and reduces system throughput, it is also an extremely sensitive metrology tool and is being employed in a wide variety of applications both in and out of the optics industry. This paper is intended as a brief review of the current state of this important technology as it emerges from university and government laboratories to more general industry use. The bidirectional scatter distribution function (or BSDF) has become the common format for expressing scatter data and is now used almost universally. Measurements are routinely made at several laboratories around the country from the UV to the mid-IR. Data analysis of optical component scatter has progressed to the point where a variety of analysis tools are becoming available for discriminating between the various sources of scatter. Work has progressed on the analysis of rough surface scatter and the application of these techniques to some challenging problems outside the optical industry. Scatter metrology is acquiring standards and formal test procedures. The available scatter data base is rapidly expanding as the number and sophistication of measurement facilities increases. Scatter from contaminants, which is a key issue for space optics, is continuing to be a major area of work as scatterometers appear in vacuum chambers at various laboratories across the country. The current flurry of work in this growing area of metrology can be expected to continue for several more years and expand to applications outside the optics industry.
Using HSYS in the analysis of Human-System interactions: Examples from the offshore petroleum industry

In an attempt to better understand the interactional relationship between humans and operational systems, HSYS was developed. The HSYS methodology provides a systematic process for analyzing Human-SYStem interactions in complex operational settings. HSYS focuses on system interactions from the human's perspective and is built around a linear model of human performance, termed the Input-Action model. According to the model, all human actions involve, to varying degrees, five sequential steps: Input Detection, Input Understanding, Action Selection, Action Planning, and Action Execution. Based on the Input-Action model, a series of flowcharts, supported by detailed “topical modules,” have been developed to analyze each of the five main components in depth. During initial validation efforts, the HSYS methodology was used to analyze 28 accidents which occurred in the offshore petroleum industry from 1980 — 1989. Although numerous factors contributed to the various accident sequences examined, one frequently identified problem was a lack of situational awareness by crew members either immediately preceding the accident or during the actual accident sequence itself. A major contributor to this lack of awareness was inadequate input detection, caused by either inadequate input recognition, inadequate input discrimination, or inadequate attention. In most instances, the root causes for these inabilities were associated with inadequate sensor/display arrays and/or poor human-machine interface design and engineering.
Low-voltage CMOS transductance cell based on parallel operation of triode and saturation transconductors

Recently a new linearity improvement technique for low voltage CMOS transconductors was proposed (by Coban, A.L. in Elect. Lett., vol. 30, p. 1124, 1994). Tne technique is based on the parallel operation of a triode and saturation transconductor.The authors comment on this paper. >
Prospects for the Use of Portfolio Approach to Energy Companies

This article describes a concept of refined assessment of direct investment portfolio attractiveness in power industry, especially relevant under the conditions of growing market instability. A methodological approach has been developed to investment projects portfolio construction, based on a mechanism of balancing risks within the portfolio. The relevance of simulation for investment portfolio planning is demonstrated. Also the authors formulate the issues and goals of investment efficiency criteria assessment and simulation, as well as power industry investment projects portfolio construction. Simulation model of project portfolio planning is offered, based on a Bass model of innovative product distribution with repeat sales. This model allows manipulating regulated market and production variables in order to form cash flow of high-risk projects in the power industry in a way that allows achieving an innovation projects portfolio with attractive profitability and acceptable risk.
Dependence of Excess Noise on the Partial Derivatives of Resistance in Superconducting Transition Edge Sensors

We have measured the relation between sensor noise and the steepness (α = TR⋅ and β = IR⋅dRdI) of the superconducting transition for various superconducting transition edge sensors. The measurements are performed on square Mo/Cu bilayer thermistors of three sizes (125 μm, 250 μm and 400 μm), which are fabricated for X‐ray detection. We have identified the devices in two regimes: a) α>100 and b) α<100. The devices with α smaller than 100 strictly follow non‐linear bolometer and micro‐calorimeter noise theory while in most devices with α greater than 100, we see an unexplained noise contribution.
Study on Seismic Performance of CFST Frame and Truss

Concrete filled steel tube (CFST) got a good application in actual project. In order to further the seismic performance of the CFST, experiment was carried on two 1/5 scale models, which included one CFST frame, one CFST truss. Based on the experimental study, load-carrying capacity, stiffness, ductility, hysteretic property, energy dissipation and failure phenomena of each model were analyzed. The study shows that the seismic performance of CFST truss has high bearing capacity, stiffness, energy dissipation capacity and good ductility.