A 15-Gbps BiCMOS XNOR gate for fast recognition of COVID-19 in binarized neural networks

The COVID-19 pandemic is spreading around the world causing more than 177 million cases and over 3.8 million deaths according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. The virus has devastating effects on economies, health, and well-being of worldwide population. Due to the high increase in daily cases, the available number of COVID-19 test kits in under-developed countries is scarce. Hence, it is vital to implement an effective screening method of patients using chest radiography since the equipment already exists. With the presence of automatic detection systems, any abnormalities in chest radiography that characterizes COVID-19 can be identified. Several artificial-intelligence algorithms have been proposed to detect the virus. However, neural networks training is considered to be time-consuming. Since computations in training neural networks are spent on floating-point multiplications, high computational power is required. Multipliers consume the most space and power among all arithmetic operators in deep neural networks. This paper proposes a 15 Gbps high-speed bipolar-complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (BiCMOS) exclusive-nor (XNOR) gate to replace multipliers in binarized neural networks. The proposed gate can be implemented on BiCMOS-based field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). This will significantly improve the response time in identifying chest abnormalities in CT scans and X-rays

Why do we need a social imagination?

This year has for many brought into sharp focus the social basis of almost all major global challenges, be it the climate crisis, racial justice, or COVID-19. Reflecting on his career in and around the social sciences, Ziyad Marar, outlines why a social imagination is now more important than ever, and puts forward 10 ways in which social insights are central to resolving the challenges we currently face

Adopting Handala : deconstructing Jordanian and Palestinian refugee notions of coexistence and transnational consciousness

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The Euler characteristic of a generic wave front in a 3‐manifold

We give a relation between Euler characteristics of a generic closed Legendrian surface and its wavefront

The Euler number of a topologically stable singular surface in a 3‐manifold

A formula for the Euler number of a generic singular surface in a 3-manifold is given. This formula not only unifies the previous results but also allows some new applications

IN VITRO STUDIES ON THE SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF MORINDA CITRIFOLIA L. (NONI) AND METHOTREXATE ON CYTOTOXICITY OF HELA CELL LINES

Objective: Cancer remains to be one of the leading causes of death around the world. Modern targeted therapies have undeniably improved cancer patients’ survival, but search still continues for safer and more effective drugs. This work is an attempt to assess the effectiveness of cotreatment of aqueous fruit extract of Morinda citrifolia L. (Noni) on methotrexate (MTX)-induced cytotoxicity on HeLa cancer cell line. Methods: HeLa cells were treated with different concentrations of MTX and Noni alone and in combination for 24 and 48 h and studied for the cytotoxic effects by various approaches. Results: There was a dose-dependent inhibition of growth when treated with MTX in a dose range of 0.045–45.4 μg/ml and Noni for a dose range of 0.3–30 mg/ml for 48 h. The IC50 for MTX was 4.45 μg/ml (1 μM/ml), and for Noni, it was 8 mg/ml while the combination exhibited a more intensive growth inhibitory effect. Our results were confirmed with phase-contrast microscopy, whereby the number of viable cells decreased with an increase in the concentration of Noni. Cells were found to have rounded up and detached from the flask indicating apoptosis. Apoptosis in HeLa cell lines was further confirmed by DNA fragmentation and flow cytometry. Conclusion: It can be concluded that Noni may enhance MTX cytotoxicity by inducing apoptosis and cell cycle arrest. Hence, cotreatment with Noni may reduce the dosage of MTX necessary for inhibiting proliferation of malignant cells and hence decrease the toxic effects of MTX on the system

The Intermediate Polar PQ Gem - Status of WET Observations of 1996

A summary of the results on PQ Gem based on WET observations conducted in February 1996 is presented. The 13.9 min spin period of the white dwarf in the system and the orbital side-band at 14.5 min have been detected unambiguously. Searches for other periods in the system gave negative results

X-ray variability of GRS 1915+105 during the low-hard state observed with the Indian X-ray astronomy experiment (IXAE)

The galactic superluminal transient X-ray source GRS 1915+105 was observed with the pointed proportional counters (PPCs) onboard the Indian satellite IRS-P3 during 1996 July 23-27. We report here details of the behavior of this source during the relatively quiet and low luminosity state. Large intensity variations by a factor of 2 to 3, generally seen in black-hole candidates, are observed at a time scale of 100 ms to few seconds. No significant variation is detected over larger time scale of minute or more. The intensity variations are described as sum of shots in the light curve, and the number distribution of the shots are found to be exponential function of the fluence and duration of the shots. The cross correlation spectrum between 6-18 keV and 2-6 keV X-rays is found to have asymmetry signifying a delay of the hard X-rays by about 0.2 to 0.4 sec. This supports the idea of hard X-rays being generated by Compton up-scattering from high energy clouds near the source of soft X-rays. Very strong and narrow quasi periodic oscillations in the frequency range 0.62 to 0.82 Hz are observed. We discuss about a model which explains a gradual change in the QPO frequencies with corresponding changes in the mass accretion rate of the disk.Comment: 14 pages including 6 figures. To appear in Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Serie