Approximate computing is an emerging computing technique for designing energy- and resource-efficient arithmetic circuits for error-resilient applications. Square root (SQR) computation is a ...fundamental and complex operation in various signal/image processing tasks. It demands high resource and energy consumption, making the square-rooter a crucial design element. This brief proposes a low-complexity logarithmic-based energy-efficient approximate square rooter (LESQ) for computing integer SQR using simple addition and shift operations. A partial error compensation scheme is also suggested for improved accuracy. The proposed approximate square rooter also enables various accuracy configurable modes to tradeoff error with hardware efficiency for targeted application requirements. LESQ achieves energy- and area-delay savings of up to 80% and 60%, respectively, compared to an accurate array-based square-rooter design. The proposed approximate design is tested on error-tolerant applications, such as image processing and amplitude modulation (AM) communication system.
In a randomized trial involving patients with acute stroke, the incidence of revascularization was higher with tenecteplase than with alteplase for intravenous thrombolysis before endovascular ...thrombectomy. Cerebral hemorrhage occurred at the same rate in each group.
Abstract
Background
: Fetal biometry, with the help of ultrasonography (USG) provides the most reliable and important information about fetal growth and well-being. Frequently used parameters for ...fetal measurements by this method are the biparietal diameter (BPD), head circumference (HC), abdominal circumference (AC), and femur length (FL). These fetal dimensions depend upon the racial demographic characteristics, nutrition, genetics and many more environmental factors of a particular population.
Aims
: The purpose of the present investigation was to define and analyze these fetal biometric parameters in our local population and to compare them with the given norms.
Methods
: This cross-sectional study with convenience sampling was conducted on a total of 425 fetuses with a period of gestation between 18 to 38 weeks. Descriptive statistics was used to calculate the mean with standard deviation and 95% confidence interval (CI) for each fetal parameter in each gestational week.
Results
: Mean of BPD and FL in our population are similar to the mean values given by Hadlock throughout the pregnancy, except near the end of the third trimester where our population shows a slightly lower range of mean values. HC and AC fall below the lower range of Hadlock as early as 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Conclusions
: Fetal biometric parameters in the studied population are at the lower range of established nomograms by Hadlock on white fetuses, more so with the progression of pregnancy.
Abstract
A series of shaking table tests will be carried out on 0.4 m high instrumented soil nailed embankments. The important parameters considered in this study consist of a combination of three ...different slope angles (β = 30°, 45°, and 60°), three different nail inclinations (i = 0°, 15°, and 30°), and three nail lengths (l = 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 m). This study revealed that the effect of slope angle on the seismic resistance of steep nailed soil slopes was significant and the minimal magnitude of the facing displacement was obtained with nail inclinations of 0° and 15° for the nailed slopes without facing and with facing, respectively. A model nailed slope with a nail inclination of 15° provided better reinforcement action than the horizontally and 30° inclined nails when stabilizing soil slopes. The maximum axial nail force was obtained at approximately two-thirds of the nail length in the model slopes with facing and at the slope facing for model slopes without facing.
Identification of residual disease in patients with localized non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following treatment with curative intent holds promise to identify patients at risk of relapse. New ...methods can detect circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) in plasma to fractional concentrations as low as a few parts per million, and clinical evidence is required to inform their use.
We analyzed 363 serial plasma samples from 88 patients with early-stage NSCLC (48.9%/28.4%/22.7% at stage I/II/III), predominantly adenocarcinomas (62.5%), treated with curative intent by surgery (n = 61), surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy/radiotherapy (n = 8), or chemoradiotherapy (n = 19). Tumour exome sequencing identified somatic mutations and plasma was analyzed using patient-specific RaDaR™ assays with up to 48 amplicons targeting tumour-specific variants unique to each patient.
ctDNA was detected before treatment in 24%, 77% and 87% of patients with stage I, II and III disease, respectively, and in 26% of all longitudinal samples. The median tumour fraction detected was 0.042%, with 63% of samples <0.1% and 36% of samples <0.01%. ctDNA detection had clinical specificity >98.5% and preceded clinical detection of recurrence of the primary tumour by a median of 212.5 days. ctDNA was detected after treatment in 18/28 (64.3%) of patients who had clinical recurrence of their primary tumour. Detection within the landmark timepoint 2 weeks to 4 months after treatment end occurred in 17% of patients, and was associated with shorter recurrence-free survival hazard ratio (HR): 14.8, P <0.00001 and overall survival (HR: 5.48, P <0.0003). ctDNA was detected 1-3 days after surgery in 25% of patients yet was not associated with disease recurrence. Detection before treatment was associated with shorter overall survival and recurrence-free survival (HR: 2.97 and 3.14, P values 0.01 and 0.003, respectively).
ctDNA detection after initial treatment of patients with early-stage NSCLC using sensitive patient-specific assays has potential to identify patients who may benefit from further therapeutic intervention.
•Sensitive personalized assays were used to detect ctDNA in 363 plasma samples from 88 patients with early-stage NSCLC.•Exome sequencing of the primary tumour was used to design personalized assays targeting 48 variants unique to each patient.•ctDNA was detected pretreatment in 51% of patients and after treatment in 64.3% who had recurrence of their primary tumour.•Detection at a landmark timepoint after treatment was associated with shorter recurrence-free and overall survival times.•Detection of minimal residual disease after treatment of early-stage NSCLC can identify patients for further intervention.
We investigate the dielectric, ferroelectric, and energy density properties of Pb-free (1 −
x
)BZT–
x
BCT ceramic capacitors at higher sintering temperature (1600 °C). A significant increase in the ...dielectric constant, with relatively low loss was observed for the investigated {Ba(Zr
0.2
Ti
0.8
)O
3
}
(1−
x
){(Ba
0.7
Ca
0.3
)TiO
3
}
x
(
x
= 0.10, 0.15, 0.20) ceramics; however, electric breakdown was low (~140, 170, 134 kV/cm), and of which room temperature (300 K) charging curve energy density values are largest ~0.88, 0.94, and 0.87 J/cm
3
with maximum high dielectric constant values ~7800, 8400, and 5200, respectively. Bulk ceramic BZT–BCT materials have shown interesting energy densities with good energy storage efficiency (~72 %) at high sintering temperature; they might be one of the strong candidates for high energy density capacitor applications in an environmentally protective atmosphere.
Articular cartilage injury poses a major challenge for both the patient and orthopaedician. Articular cartilage defects once formed do not regenerate spontaneously, rather replaced by fibrocartilage ...which is weaker in mechanical competence than the normal hyaline cartilage. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) along with different growth factors and scaffolds are currently incorporated in tissue engineering to overcome the deficiencies associated with currently available surgical methods and to facilitate cartilage healing. MSCs, being readily available with a potential to differentiate into chondrocytes which are enhanced by the application of different growth factors, are considered for effective repair of articular cartilage after injury. However, therapeutic application of MSCs and growth factors for cartilage repair remains in its infancy, with no comparative clinical study to that of the other surgical techniques. The present review covers the role of MSCs, growth factors and scaffolds for the repair of articular cartilage injury.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Hardware Trojan (HT) intrusion at different integrated circuit (IC) phases is the most important concern for the semiconductor industries. Recently, machine learning (ML) models have been used to ...detect HT from the pre-silicon IC phase, which utilizes either structural or SCOAP gate level netlist features. However, the main concern is that an adversary may poison the training dataset by flipping the target labels to malign the ML model training, which further provides an incorrect prediction on the test dataset. Thus, due to the malicious training of ML models, the Trojan-inserted ICs are missed out and can easily perform their malicious activities. Hence, it is of utmost importance to scan the training dataset and identify the poisoned input samples before applying ML models for HT detection. Therefore, this paper proposes a new technique that first identifies the poisoned training samples, which consist of SCOAP features, and then detects HTs from the unseen gate-level netlist. The proposed technique employs a robust ensemble Categorical Boosting (CatBoost) model, which avoids the problem of target leakage by using the concept of ordered boosting. Further, a label flipping poisoning attack based on a stochastic hill-climbing search is proposed, which flips the labels of the handful of samples that maximizes the validation dataset loss by deteriorating the model performance. Moreover, a defense method is proposed which utilizes CatBoost object importance and k-nearest neighbor to detect malicious training samples and restore their original labels. Finally, the CatBoost model is trained on the clean dataset to detect the HT nets from the unseen gate-level netlist accurately. Experimental results shows that the proposed attack method increases the on-an-average loss up to
58
%
and
54
%
on Trust-Hub and DeTrust benchmarks. Whereas the proposed defense method accurately identifies the poisoned input labels from the training dataset with on-an-average
99
%
accuracy on these benchmarks.
The diketopyrrolopyrrole-based copolymers PDPP-BBT and TDPP-BBT were synthesized and used as a donor for bulk heterojunction photovoltaic devices. The photophysical properties of these polymers ...showed absorption in the range 500−600 nm with a maximum peak around 563 nm, while TDPP-BBT showed broadband absorption in the range 620 − 800 nm with a peak around 656 nm. The power conversion efficiencies (PCE) of the polymer solar cells based on these copolymers and 6,6-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) were 0.68% (as cast PDPP-BBT:PCBM), 1.51% (annealed PDPP-BBT:PCBM), 1.57% (as cast TDPP-BBT:PCBM), and 2.78% (annealed TDPP-BBT:PCBM), under illumination of AM 1.5 (100 mW/cm2). The higher PCE for TDPP-BBT-based polymer solar cells has been attributed to the low band gap of this copolymer as compared to PDPP-BBT, which increases the numbers of photogenerated excitons and corresponding photocurrent of the device. These results indicate that PDPP-BBT and TDPP-BBT act as excellent electron donors for bulk heterojunction devices.
PDF
