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Background Purpose Methods Results Conclusion Periventricular‐intraventricular hemorrhage can lead to posthemorrhagic ventricular dilatation or even posthemorrhagic hydrocephalus if not detected promptly. Sequential cranial ultrasound scans are typically used for their diagnoses. Nonetheless, manual image audit has numerous disadvantages.This study aimed to develop a predictive model utilizing modified inception (MI) and high‐level feature‐guided attention (HFA) modules for predicting neonatal lateral ventricular dilation via ultrasound images.The MI modules reduced input data sizes and dimensions, while the HFA modules effectively delved into semantic information through supervision from high‐level feature images to low‐level feature images. The process facilitated the accurate identification of dilated lateral ventricles. A total of 710 neonates, corresponding to 1420 lateral ventricles, were recruited in this study. Each lateral ventricle was captured in two images, one on the parasagittal plane and the other on the coronal plane. The combination of anterior horn width, ventricular index, thalamo‐occipital distance, and ventricular height served as the gold standard. A lateral ventricle would be considered dilatated if any of these four indices exceeded its upper reference value. These lateral ventricles were randomly split into training and testing sets at a 7:3 ratio. We evaluated the validity of our proposed approach and its competitors across the coronal plane, parasagittal plane, and overall performance. We also determined the impact of subjects’ baseline characteristics on the overall performance of the proposed approach. Additionally, ablation analyses were conducted to ensure the efficacy of the proposed approach.Our proposed approach achieved the largest Youden index (0.65, 95% CI: 0.58–0.72), DOR (27.11, 95% CI: 15.89–46.26), area under curves (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) (0.84, 95% CI: 0.80–0.88), and AUC of precision‐recall curve (PRC) (0.81, 95% CI: 0.74–0.86) in the overall performance assessment and ablation analyses. Moreover, it boasted the biggest Cramer's V values on the coronal (Cramer's V = 0.488, p < 0.001) and parasagittal (Cramer's V = 0.713, p < 0.001) planes individually. Factors such as left side, male sex, singleton birth, and vaginal delivery were positively correlated with higher performance regarding the proposed algorithm, except for the gestational age.This work provides a novel attention optimized algorithm for rapid and accurate ventricular dilatation predictions. It surpasses the traditional algorithms in terms of validity whether concerning the coronal plane, parasagittal plane, or overall performance. The overall performance of algorithms will be influenced by the baseline characteristics of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Hubei Open Vocational College is the property of Journal of Hubei Open Vocational College Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Correction of the digital designs have emerged as a major bottleneck at Register Transfer Level (RTL) due to the growing complexity of the digital systems and shortening time-to-market. Existing automated correction methods face problems like large number of error root causes, poor scalability, and multiple design errors. To address these problems, we propose an automatic correction methodology based on a lightweight partial high level synthesis (HLS) flow which takes as inputs a golden C specification and a buggy RTL design and outputs the corrected RTL model. Synthesizing the specification using a HLS tool without considering the buggy RTL to obtain the corrected RTL is not the case because manual RTL optimizations done by the designer should be preserved so that the architecture of the corrected RTL design should be as similar as possible to that of the buggy one. The results on industrial large designs show that the proposed methodology achieves 92.3% less new resources and 81.1% less connections compared to synthesizing the golden specification using a HLS tool without considering the architecture of the buggy RTL design. • A lightweight partial high level synthesis mechanism to correct RTL designs. • Preserving manual RTL optimizations done by the designer. • Addressing the large number of error root causes issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power optimization has become a major concern for most digital hardware designers, particularly in early design phases and especially in limited power budget systems (battery-operated hand-held devices, electro-optical pluggable modules, IoT and green energy systems, etc.). Subsequently, early power consumption estimation at design time is crucial for power optimization. The aim of this paper is to present an overview of high-level power estimation techniques currently available along with a comprehensive comparison between different methodologies and their applications on estimated models. When high speed and high performance are key features of a specific embedded system, increase in energy consumption becomes the main hurdle to be tackled while keeping speed/performance v/s power consumption trade-off at a minimum. This paper provides designers, interested in power consumption modeling, with knowledge on how to select best power estimation techniques applied to designated target models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper connects the debate regarding perceptual representation of high-level properties and the debate regarding non-conceptual perceptual representation. I present and defend a distinction between representationally-complex properties and properties that are simpler to represent and offer ways of assessing whether a property is representationally complex. I address conditions under which such a property might be non-conceptually represented and conclude that most representationally-complex properties are simply too complex to be non-conceptually represented. Thus, most mental states that represent representationally-complex properties must be conceptual. This conclusion is relevant for a variety of philosophical theories (perception, ethics, emotions, pain) and is especially dramatic with respect to accounts according to which a mental state can non-conceptually represent such properties. As a test case for applying my argument I consider a group of such accounts: non-conceptual perceptual views of emotions, which my argument entails are false. I end by considering the implications my argument has for different theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most deep-learning-based vision models are trained and tested on clear images, avoiding noisy, or hazy, images. However, these models may encounter degraded images. So, it is important to recover and enhance them using a dehazing process. Dehazing usually serves as a preprocessing step for low-, medium-, and high-level vision tasks. Therefore, this article empirically studies the impact of haze and dehazing on high-level vision tasks and considers the degree to which dehazing algorithms can improve a vision model's performance. For this purpose, we created two synthetic hazy datasets and trained several detection and classification models on both clear and hazy images. We found that haze and fog can easily affect a vision model's performance and observed that using dehazing directly as a preprocessing step for high-level vision tasks did not substantially improve vision model's performance but also renders performance unreliable and unpredictable. Therefore, when developing deep vision models, the research community should maintain aspects of bad weather conditions, such as haze, mist, fog, and rain, to avoid the failure of their proposed outdoor vision models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the connotation and process of innovation-driven development, we have developed a comprehensive evaluation system containing 20 indicators in five aspects, including innovation factors, innovation subjects, innovation environments, innovation outputs, and development performance, to measure the levels of innovation-driven development in Sichuan province. Selecting 21 cities and prefectures in Sichuan province as research objects, we evaluated and measured the innovation-driven development levels of each city and prefecture using the entropy weight method (EWM). According to the evaluation results, the 21 cities and prefectures were divided into four categories depending on their levels of innovation-driven development: advanced-level, high-level, medium-level, and low-level. The results show that there are obvious spatial differences in terms of innovation-driven development levels among cities and prefectures in Sichuan province. Specifically, Chengdu, Mianyang, Panzhihua, and Deyang cities rank among the top four cities because of their advanced and high levels of innovation-driven development, while other cities and prefectures are at the medium and low levels. We also analyzed the innovation-driven development policies and practices of cities and prefectures in Sichuan province, to provide guidance for implementing innovation-driven development strategies in the cities and prefectures in the future.

Abstract Background Duodenoscope-emerging infection especially drug-resistant bacteria is considered a major concern nowadays. Different approaches were attempted to overcome this problem, like double high-level disinfection procedure. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate risk difference for positive cultures from duodenoscopes between double high-level disinfection (dHLD) and single (standard) high-level disinfection (sHLD). Main body A thorough literature search (in October and November 2019) for studies comparing dHLD and sHLD for duodenoscopes was performed by 3 researchers in the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and Cochran databases. The search terms were “duodenoscope,” “ERCP endoscope,” “disinfection,” “sterilization,” and “reprocessing,” and only randomized clinical trials with the English language were accepted. Four trials were identified studying dHLD, and only 2 clinical trials comparing dHLD with standard sHLD were found reporting 6193 duodenoscope cultures. Overall sHLD cultures were 2972, and dHLD cultures were 3221; overall positive cultures were 140 in sHLD and 161 in dHLD. The results of a meta-analysis using the random-effect model showed no significant risk difference (RD) between the 2 procedures for duodenoscope positive cultures (p = 0.53, RD 0.003, 95% CI “− 0.007–0.013”). Conclusions Double HLD offered no significant difference over single HLD for duodenoscope disinfection. An alternative strategy to overcome duodenoscope-transmitted infection is a big issue to be resolved.

Saliency detection has become a valuable tool in computer vision processing, which has been attracting a good deal of attention. Although a lot of research has been done, it cannot obtain ideal performance. In most saliency detection framework, the single difference cue is often used to detect saliency map, but their results were far from satisfaction for low discriminative power of single cue. In addition to the composition of the detection cues during the whole process, the used cues which could only describe the low level information could also lead to poor detection. In order to solve this problem effectively, the paper proposed a novel saliency detection framework by fusing multi-cue difference with high level difference. Basically, the comprehensive information is coupled into multi-cues vectors to remove the non-salient regions and enhance the brightness of the salient area. Specifically, we utilize the fusion of multi-cues and high-level information to improve the ability of understanding images. To further improve the performance of the proposed framework in AUC, we adopt multiple assignments strategy while enhancing the precision of saliency detection. Extensive experiments indicate that the newly constructed multi-cues with high level information could effectively suppress the influence of background information on salient regions. In order to verify the effectiveness of the new algorithm, our experiment uses several standard benchmark datasets (MSRA, ASD, SED1, SED2, and SOD) to test the performance of the algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate that this method has achieved good saliency detection result and good AUC performance in the test. More importantly, the experimental results also show that the proposed method is well complementary to many existing algorithms.

Do we perceptually experience moral properties like rightness and wrongness? For example, as in Gilbert Harman's classic case, when we see a group of young hoodlums pour gasoline on a cat and ignite it, can we, in the same robust sense, see the action's wrongness? (Harman in The nature of morality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977). Many philosophers have recently discussed this question, argued for a positive answer and/or discussed its epistemological implications. This paper presents a new case for a negative answer by, first, getting much clearer on how such experience could be possible at all; second, responding the only argument for a positive answer; and, finally, arguing that postulation of such experience is explanatorily redundant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voltage source converters (VSCs)-based high-voltage direct current grid (HVDC grid) is increasingly being used in high-level and long-distance power transmission. DC breakers could be applied to isolate fault on long overhead DC links, whereas most of these faults would be temporary and can be recovered after some deionisation time. The objective of this article lies in proposing and implementing DC line soft reclosing sequence based on the controllability of hybrid HVDC breaker (HHB). The proposed method has been evaluated in a four-terminal VSC-based HVDC grid with HHBs at each DC lines' end. The analysis and simulations in PSCAD/EMTDC show that the proposed sequential operation of HHB can softly recover the faulty line and identify whether the fault is temporary or permanent, with little impact on the whole DC system.

This paper proposes a new method that compares the magnitude between multiple digital input signals and introduces its logic circuit at RTL (register transfer level). For simultaneously comparing multiple inputs, the proposed algorithm uses a simple digital logic function to provide information of the largest (or smallest) value and position for these inputs. The disadvantage of using this method is that it incurs an increase hardware resource usage. To overcome this, we propose a reuse method for the overlapped logic operation. The proposed method focuses on improving the operational clock frequency, in other words, decreasing combinational delay time. After implementing the comparison method with Verilog-HDL (hardware description language), we conduct an experiment with the 28 nm CMOS library provided by TSMC Inc. In the case of 4, 8, 16, and 32 input signals, the proposed method can increase the operating clock frequency by as much as about 1.65, 2.42, 3.28 and 3.45 times, respectively, with about 1.04, 0.97, 1.84 and 4.26 times the hardware resources. • A new method to compare the magnitude between multiple unsigned digital input signals. • Simultaneously comparing multiple inputs with a simple logic function. • Experiment with the 28 nm CMOS library. • In the case of 4, 8, 16 and 32 input signals, high speed clock frequency as much as 1.65, 2.42, 3.28 and 3.45 times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voltage source converters (VSCs)-based high-voltage direct current grid (HVDC grid) is increasingly being used in high-level and long-distance power transmission. DC breakers could be applied to isolate fault on long overhead DC links, whereas most of these faults would be temporary and can be recovered after some deionisation time. The objective of this article lies in proposing and implementing DC line soft reclosing sequence based on the controllability of hybrid HVDC breaker (HHB). The proposed method has been evaluated in a four-terminal VSC-based HVDC grid with HHBs at each DC lines' end. The analysis and simulations in PSCAD/EMTDC show that the proposed sequential operation of HHB can softly recover the faulty line and identify whether the fault is temporary or permanent, with little impact on the whole DC system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conditions for high performance have changed considerably over the last few years. Athletes must spend more time training and competing, devote a lot of time to mental, physical and nutritional professionals and continue to respond to some constraints such as studying, spending time with their families, friends and quality of life. In this context and based on the work of Rosa, we wonder about the capacity of elite athletes to combine all these constraints, namely to manage the acceleration in their pace of life, in order to be able to achieve always more and better in the same time unit. To address this issue, we interviewed 42 French high-level athletes who train at the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (INSEP). Results show that to suit their goals, athletes implement arrangement and adjustment strategies aimed at making the time they have wholly useful and efficient. This time constraint puts athletes in a perpetual state of tension, on the verge of a good or poor life. The paper shows how the question of time, and particularly the acceleration of pace of life, is vital for modern sporting performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a multi-level feature learning framework for human action recognition using a single body-worn inertial sensor. The framework consists of three phases, respectively designed to analyze signal-based (low-level), components (mid-level) and semantic (high-level) information. Low-level features capture the time and frequency domain property while mid-level representations learn the composition of the action. The Max-margin Latent Pattern Learning (MLPL) method is proposed to learn high-level semantic descriptions of latent action patterns as the output of our framework. The proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art performances, 88.7%, 98.8% and 72.6% (weighted F 1 score) respectively, on Skoda, WISDM and OPP datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new algorithm for comparing amplitude between multiple digital input signals and its digital logic architecture. After simultaneously comparing multiple inputs, the proposed algorithm can provide the information of the largest (or smallest) value among them by using a simple digital logic function. The drawback of the method is to increase hardware resource. To overcome this we propose a reuse method of the overlapped logic operation. The proposed method focuses on enhancing the operational clock frequency, in other words decreasing combinational delay time. After implementing the comparing method with HDL (hardware description language), we experiment on it with environment of Cyclone III EP3C40F324A7 FPGA of Altera Inc. In case of 4 input signals, it can increase the operational speed as mush as 1.66 times with 1.20 times the hardware resource. In case of 8, it can also have 2.29 times the clock frequency and 2.15 times the hardware resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Yutaka Takata,1 Toshihiro Ansai,2 Inho Soh,2 Shuji Awano,2 Ikuo Nakamichi,1 Sumio Akifusa,3 Kenichi Goto,1 Akihiro Yoshida,2 Hiroki Fujii,1 Ritsuko Fujisawa,1 Kazuo Sonoki31Division of General Internal Medicine, 2Division of Community Oral Health Science, 3Department of Oral Health and Environment, School of Oral Health Science, Kyushu Dental University, Kitakyushu, JapanBackground: Little is known about the relationship between disease-specific mortality and high-level activities of daily living in the elderly. We examined whether mortality is associated with high-level activities of daily living in an octogenarian population.Methods: We conducted a population-based cross-sectional and prospective cohort study in 693 older persons aged 80 years and living in Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture. We then evaluated the association between 12-year disease-specific mortality and high-level functional capacity as measured by the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology Index of Competence, which is a standardized multidimensional 13-item instrument; items 1 through 5 are classified as instrumental self-maintenance activity, items 6 through 9 as intellectual activity, items 10 through 13 as social roles activity, and all 13 items together yield total functional capacity.Results: By the 12-year follow-up of the 693 participants, 413 had died, 242 survived, and 38 were unable to be located. Of the 413 who died, 105 died of cardiovascular disease, 73 of respiratory tract disease, 71 of cancer, and 39 of senility. Of the other 125 deaths, 59 were due to other diseases, and the cause of death for 66 participants is not known. The hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality, adjusted for confounding factors with multivariate Cox analyses, fell by 6% (HR 0.937, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.899–0.978, P = 0.003) with each one-point increase in participants’ scores on the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology Index of total functional capacity. With one-point increases in instrumental self-maintenance activity and in intellectual activity, the HRs for all-cause mortality decreased by 14% (HR 0.856, 95% CI 0.787–0.930, P = 0.000) and 12% (HR 0.884, 95% CI 0.794–0.983, P = 0.023), respectively. Respiratory mortality with HR adjustment fell by 11% (HR 0.887, 95% CI 0.804–0.978, P = 0.016) and 24% (HR 0.760, 95% CI 0.627–0.922, P = 0.005) with one-point increases in the scores of total functional capacity and instrumental self-maintenance activity, respectively. Similarly, mortality due to senility fell by 16% (HR 0.838, 95% CI 0.743–0.946, P = 0.004), 29% (HR 0.707, 95% CI 0.564–0.886, P = 0.003), and 29% (HR 0.710, 95% CI 0.522–0.966, P = 0.029) with one-point increases in the scores of total functional capacity, instrumental self-maintenance activity, and intellectual activity, respectively.Conclusion: These findings suggest that high-level activities of daily living may be an independent predictor of mortality due to all causes, respiratory disease and senility in older persons.Keywords: older persons, community-dwelling, mortality, respiratory death, instrumental ADL

Résumé Au cours de l’année 2009, deux événements modifièrent l’organisation du sport des personnes dites handicapées mentales et psychiques : d’abord la reconnaissance ministérielle des sportifs d’élite de la Fédération française du sport adapté (FFSA) comme athlètes de haut niveau, ensuite leur réintégration dans le mouvement paralympique. C’est dans un tel contexte que naissent en 2010 des structures d’entraînement appelées « pôles France » destinées aux athlètes de haut niveau de la FFSA. Cet article propose à partir d’une enquête ethnographique de mettre au jour les éventuels infléchissements ou transformations des parcours de vie et de l’identité que peut générer chez des sportifs, catégorisés comme déficients intellectuels, l’entrée dans une carrière de « sportif de haut niveau » et son déroulement. L’expérience de l’intensification, de l’amélioration et de la réussite compétitive de la pratique sportive conduit à l’expression d’une fierté sportive qui, en dehors du monde sportif, reste souvent discrète et concomitante du maintien d’une certaine stigmatisation. Pour la plupart des athlètes, leur expérience au sein du pôle France se traduit par une distanciation vis-à-vis du monde médico-social et par un désir d’inscription et de participation sur la longue durée au sein du sport adapté, démentant ainsi un supposé désir d’inclusion de leur part au sein du monde ordinaire. During year 2009, the organization of sport for people labeled as intellectual or psychic disabled has been modified by two events: elite athletes of the French federation of adapted sport (FFSA) were recognized officially as high-level athletes by the government, then they were reintegrated to the paralympic movement. In this context, in 2010, training structures called “pôle France” were created for the high-level athletes from the FFSA. This article, based on an ethnographic research, offers to update any inflection or changes in life course and identity that can be generated for athletes labeled as intellectually disabled, by joining a career of “high-level sport”. The experience of sport intensification, improvement of success of competitive practice, leads to the expression of a pride that, outside the sport world, is often discreet, and concomitantly some stigma perdure. For most athletes, their experience in the France Center result in a distancing towards medico-social world, and create a desire for participation in adapted sport in long-term, contradicting their supposed desire for inclusion in the ordinary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this article is to present the output of a study on women who play rugby union at international level. This article aims to uncover the steps in their sport socialization – in rugby among others – and to understand how these women construct their identities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 players from the French national rugby union women’s team. First, the results show that the players have varied sport and rugby socializations. Sport socialization happened at an early age for most of the players, but two different subgroups seem to emerge vis-à-vis rugby socialization: members of the second underwent socialization through their family for many years, while members of the other were not as exposed to rugby. As far as the identity question is concerned, the players present different constructions vis-à-vis social norms. The results show that a majority of women say they do not feel the need to meet social norms said to be feminine, while others want to in order to free themselves from the masculine identity caused by the fact that they play rugby. Lastly, some of the players set limits on this double identity, which is sometimes identified as a constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase entrainment of neural oscillations, the brain's adjustment to rhythmic stimulation, is a central component in recent theories of speech comprehension: the alignment between brain oscillations and speech sound improves speech intelligibility. However, phase entrainment to everyday speech sound could also be explained by oscillations passively following the low-level periodicities (e.g., in sound amplitude and spectral content) of auditory stimulation—and not by an adjustment to the speech rhythm per se . Recently, using novel speech/noise mixture stimuli, we have shown that behavioral performance can entrain to speech sound even when high-level features (including phonetic information) are not accompanied by fluctuations in sound amplitude and spectral content. In the present study, we report that neural phase entrainment might underlie our behavioral findings. We observed phase-locking between electroencephalogram (EEG) and speech sound in response not only to original (unprocessed) speech but also to our constructed “high-level” speech/noise mixture stimuli. Phase entrainment to original speech and speech/noise sound did not differ in the degree of entrainment, but rather in the actual phase difference between EEG signal and sound. Phase entrainment was not abolished when speech/noise stimuli were presented in reverse (which disrupts semantic processing), indicating that acoustic (rather than linguistic) high-level features play a major role in the observed neural entrainment. Our results provide further evidence for phase entrainment as a potential mechanism underlying speech processing and segmentation, and for the involvement of high-level processes in the adjustment to the rhythm of speech. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Medicine & Science of Physical Activity & Sport / Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Física y del Deporte is the property of Revista Internacional de Medicina y Ciencias de la Actividad Fisica y del Deporte and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Constantly bombarded with input, the brain has the need to filter out relevant information while ignoring the irrelevant rest. A powerful tool may be represented by neural oscillations which entrain their high-excitability phase to important input while their low-excitability phase attenuates irrelevant information. Indeed, the alignment between brain oscillations and speech improves intelligibility and helps dissociating speakers during a “cocktail party”. Although well-investigated, the contribution of low- and high-level processes to phase entrainment to speech sound has only recently begun to be understood. Here, we review those findings, and concentrate on three main results: (1) Phase entrainment to speech sound is modulated by attention or predictions, likely supported by top-down signals and indicating higher-level processes involved in the brain’s adjustment to speech. (2) As phase entrainment to speech can be observed without systematic fluctuations in sound amplitude or spectral content, it does not only reflect a passive steady-state “ringing” of the cochlea, but entails a higher-level process. (3) The role of intelligibility for phase entrainment is debated. Recent results suggest that intelligibility modulates the behavioral consequences of entrainment, rather than directly affecting the strength of entrainment in auditory regions. We conclude that phase entrainment to speech reflects a sophisticated mechanism: several high-level processes interact to optimally align neural oscillations with predicted events of high relevance, even when they are hidden in a continuous stream of background noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atypical integration is a topic of debate in the autism literature. Some theories suggest that altered perception in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is due to a failure to integrate information from meaningful context into the final percept, whereas others suggest that integration of low-level features is impaired. Empirical research which forms the basis for these theories has failed to account for higher-level influences not inherent in the stimuli (i.e., instructions and goals) and assess integration at both lower and higher perceptual levels within the same task. Here, we describe how perceived expectations and goals of a task can modulate the processing of low-level visual input via the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). We then go on to illustrate how future research might assess the relative contribution of both low and high-level processes using the same paradigm. We conclude by recommending that when results appear conflicting, consideration of the relative strength of low-level input vs. feedback or high-level processes may prove helpful. Importantly, research in this area needs to more broadly consider the various influences on perception, and find better ways to assess the contributions of early and later visual processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptual phase entrainment improves speech intelligibility by phase-locking the brain's high-excitability and low-excitability phases to relevant or irrelevant events in the speech input. However, it remains unclear whether phase entrainment to speech can be explained by a passive "following" of rhythmic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content or whether entrainment entails an active tracking of higher-level cues: in everyday speech, rhythmic fluctuations in low-level and high-level features always covary. Here, we resolve this issue by constructing novel speech/noise stimuli with intelligible speech but without systematic changes in sound amplitude and spectral content. The probability of detecting a tone pip, presented to human listeners at random moments during our speech/noise stimuli, was significantly modulated by the rhythmic changes in high-level information. Thus, perception can entrain to the speech rhythm even without concurrent fluctuations in sound amplitude or spectral content. Strikingly, the actual entrainment phase depended on the tone-pip frequency, with tone pips within and beyond the principal frequency range of the speech sound modulated in opposite fashion. This result suggests that only those neural populations processing the actually presented frequencies are set to their high-excitability phase, whereas other populations are entrained to the opposite, low-excitability phase. Furthermore, we show that the perceptual entrainment is strongly reduced when speech intelligibility is abolished by presenting speech/noise stimuli in reverse, indicating that linguistic information plays an important role for the observed perceptual entrainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The design complexity of integrated circuits requires techniques that automate and ease common tasks, allowing developers to keep up with the rapid growth and demand of the industry. This paper presents acSynth, an integrated framework for development and synthesis based on ArchC ADL descriptions and introduces a new power characterization method at the architectural level. The acSynth is composed of a characterization tool used to extract the energy consumption behavior of processors and also of a simulation method that, after characterization, is able to estimate software energy consumption at high speeds. Our experimental results show the power figures obtained by the characterization flow of Plasma and Leon3 processors, a MIPS-I and SPARCv8 HDL descriptions, respectively, using two different synthesis tools: Xilinx Xpower and Altera PowerPlay. The acSynth simulator used these power figures to allow power analysis at more than 35 million instructions per second in a simulation with small accuracy diversion and without loss of generality. The system executes large tests in minutes, which would otherwise take years in standard HDL methodologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The efficiency of power optimization tools depends on information on design power provided by the power estimation models. Power models targeting different power groups can enable fast identification of the most power consuming parts of design and their properties. The accuracy of these estimation models is highly dependent on the accuracy of the method used for their characterization. The highest precision is achieved by using physical onboard measurements. In this paper, we present a measurement methodology that is primarily aimed at calibrating and validating high-level dynamic power estimation models. The measurements have been carefully designed to enable the separation of the interconnect power from the logic power and the power of the clock circuitry, so that each of these power groups can be used for the corresponding model validation. The standard measurement uncertainty is lower than 2% of the measured value even with a very small number of repeated measurements. Additionally, the accuracy of a commercial low-level power estimation tool has been also assessed for comparison purposes. The results indicate that the tool is not suitable for power estimation of data path-oriented designs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We developed novel lentiviral vectors by using “Tet-Off system” and succeeded in achieving high-level and neuron-specific gene transduction in vivo. One week after viral injection into the rat neostriatum, the GFP expression was almost completely neuron-specific and about 40 times higher than the expression of a conventional lentiviral vector. High transcriptional activity and neuronal specificity were sustained for up to 8 weeks. Furthermore, neuronal processes of the infected neurons were efficiently visualized by adding a plasma membrane-targeting signal to GFP. These results suggest that the present method is valuable for strong gene transduction and clear visualization of neurons in vivo. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers information on a high-level VLSI design platform wherein it enables hardware description at the algorithm level. It aids the use of fixed-point operations to improve description of digital system processing algorithms. It also automatically places clock gating for registers thus decreasing dynamic power dissipation. The outcomes of the study suggests that CoDel and Synopsys' clock gating saves power, and CoDel platform has slower run times but decreases power dissipation.