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Routing resources in modern FPGAs use 50% of the silicon real estate and are significant contributors to critical path delay and power consumption; the situation gets worse with each successive process generation, as transistors scale more effectively than wires. To cope with these challenges, FPGA architects have divided wires into local and global categories and introduced fast dedicated carry chains between adjacent logic cells, which reduce routing resource usage for certain arithmetic circuits (primarily adders and subtractors). Inspired by the carry chains, we generalize the idea to connect lookup tables (LUTs) in adjacent logic cells. By exploiting the fracturable structure of LUTs in current FPGA generations, we increase the utilization of the existing LUTs in the logic cell by providing new inputs along the logic chain, but without increasing the I/O bandwidth from the programmable interconnect. This allows us to increase the logic density of the configurable logic cells while reducing demand for routing resources, as long as the mapping tools are able to exploit the logic chains. Our experiments using the combinational MCNC benchmarks and comparing against an Altera Stratix-III FPGA show that the introduction of logic chains reduce the average usage of local routing wires by 37%, with a 12% reduction in total wiring (local and global); this translates to improvements in dynamic power consumption of 18% in the routing network and 10% overall, while utilizing 4% fewer logic cells, on average. Copyright 2011 ACM.

Effective online teaching and learning requires readiness of all stakeholders, students, faculty, and administrators while considering contextual factors that influence the design and delivery of online learning. The purpose of this study is to explore how ready for online teaching faculty are in a Lebanese higher education context and to investigate readiness factors that impact their online teaching. It also aims at identifying any significant differences in readiness based on gender, years of teaching experience and discipline. A survey was developed based on a review of the literature and existing surveys that address readiness factors for online teaching. The survey was administered in Spring 2020, and 210 faculty at a private higher education institution completed the survey. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and descriptive statistics were conducted. The EFA resulted in 5 factors associated with faculty readiness to teach online, namely technology access and skills, course design, online pedagogy, attitude, and institutional support. Descriptive statistics revealed that faculty have the minimum required technology skills to teach online, yet they are faced with technical challenges associated with the context and the need for institutional support. MANOVA tests revealed a statistically significant difference between female faculty members who are readier in terms of course design and attitude than their counterpart males, a statistically significant difference in terms of course design for faculty who have more years of teaching experience. As for discipline specific readiness, majors that are focused on art and design revealed to be less ready for online teaching. This study implies the need for a more robust infrastructure to expand the delivery of online learning in Lebanon and the need for professional development for faculty to create pedagogically and technically enhanced online courses., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Authors.)

Introduction: Autophagy is an intracellular process that plays a key role in the cellular homeostasis. Recently, it has been described as a potential therapeutic target in oncology, whether by activating or inhibiting its different cascades. Autophagy inhibitors interact with different molecular processes of the hallmarks of cancer., Areas Covered: Multiple proteins of the autophagy cascade could be aimed by specific inhibitors in many tumors, notably bladder cancer. In fact, bladder cancer has been increasing in prevalence over the last decade, and resistance to conventional treatment has been extensively reported in the literature. Autophagy inhibitors in bladder cancer have been described in preclinical studies to increase the sensitivity of the tumor to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This paper is a review of the literature, which selected randomized trials, cohort studies, and case-control studies documenting the relationship between autophagy inhibitors and bladder cancer treatment., Expert Opinion: Autophagy is a promising pathway for cancer cell targeting that opens the horizons for a potential new therapeutic area in particular the multidisciplinary management of bladder cancer.

Introduction: The aim of this in vitro study was to determine if there is a significant difference in the excess adhesive flash between the metallic APC™ Flash-Free adhesive system, the APC™ pre-coated adhesive system and a conventional uncoated system., Materials and Methods: One hundred eighty-six freshly extracted human premolars were randomly and blindly divided into three groups according to the type of brackets. Group A (control group n=60): The conventional uncoated metallic bracket (Victory, 3M Unitek®) with a Transbond XT™ Light Cure Adhesive Paste was used. Group B (n=60): The APC™ II metallic maxillary precoated premolar brackets was used. Group C (n=66) : The metallic APC™ Flash-Free adhesive system without flash clean up was used. Images were taken at 40 magnifications in a dental microscope (Leica M320 for dental, Wetzlar, Germany) then analyzed with the ImageJ software and the area of excess adhesive flash was measured., Results: The mean percentage was significantly different between the three groups (p<0.001; ANOVA). It was significantly smaller for brackets in the APC Flash-Free group (p<0.001), and the difference was not significant between conventional brackets and APC (p=0.224)., Discussion: The new technique seems to reduce the amount of excessive adhesive around orthodontic brackets.

Objectives: This study describes the results of NBME (National Board of Medical Examiners) implementation in Balamand Medical School (BMS) from 2015 to 2019, after major curricular changes were introduced as of 2012. BMS students' performance was compared with the international USMLE step 1 (United States Medical Licensing Examination, herein referred to as step 1) cohorts' performances. The BMS students' NBME results were analyzed over the successive academic years to assess the impact of the serial curricular changes that were implemented., Methods: This longitudinal study describes the performance of BMS preclinical second year medicine (Med II) students on all their NBME exams over 4 academic years starting 2015-2016 to 2018-2019. These scores were compared with the step 1 comparison group scores using item difficulty. The t test was computed for each of the NBME exams to check whether the scores' differences were significant., Results: Results revealed that all BMS cohorts scored lower than the international USMLE step 1 comparison cohorts in all disciplines across the 4 academic years except Psychiatry. However, the results were progressively approaching step 1 results, and the difference between step 1 scores and BMS students' NBME scores became closer and not significant as of year 4., Conclusions: The results of the study are promising. They show that the serial curricular changes enabled BMS Med II students' scores to reach the international cohorts' scores after 4 academic years. Moreover, the absence of statistical difference between cohort 4 scores and step 1 cohorts is not module dependent and applies to all clinical modules. Further studies should be conducted to assess whether the results obtained for cohort 4 can be maintained., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting Interests:The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2020.)