Characterization of CMOS Spiral Inductors

In this work "full-wave" simulations of integrated inductors are presented and compared with measurements of fabricated CMOS chips. The good agreement between measurements and simulations demonstrates the accuracy of the tool, which is, hence, a cheaper alternative to experimental characterization. Furthermore, the proposed approach may give precious hints for performance improvements, by making internal device fields and currents available for the VLSI designer and providing compact, most effective, equivalent models

The effects of pioglitazone, a PPARγ receptor agonist, on the abuse liability of oxycodone among nondependent opioid users

Aims: Activation of PPARγ by pioglitazone (PIO) has shown some efficacy in attenuating addictive-like responses in laboratory animals. The ability of PIO to alter the effects of opioids in humans has not been characterized in a controlled laboratory setting. The proposed investigation sought to examine the effects of PIO on the subjective, analgesic, physiological and cognitive effects of oxycodone (OXY). Methods: During this investigation, nondependent prescription opioid abusers (N = 17 completers) were maintained for 2-3 weeks on ascending daily doses of PIO (0 mg, 15 mg, 45 mg) prior to completing a laboratory session assessing the aforementioned effects of OXY [using a within-session cumulative dosing procedure (0, 10, and 20 mg, cumulative dose = 30 mg)]. Results: OXY produced typical mu opioid agonist effects: miosis, decreased pain perception, and decreased respiratory rate. OXY also produced dose-dependent increases in positive subjective responses. Yet, ratings such as: drug "liking," "high," and "good drug effect," were not significantly altered as a function of PIO maintenance dose. Discussion: These data suggest that PIO may not be useful for reducing the abuse liability of OXY. These data were obtained with a sample of nondependent opioid users and therefore may not be applicable to dependent populations or to other opioids. Although PIO failed to alter the abuse liability of OXY, the interaction between glia and opioid receptors is not well understood so the possibility remains that medications that interact with glia in other ways may show more promise

The Mixed Pattern and the Other Conjunctive Strategies in Herodotus’ Greek:an Analysis from a Typological Perspective

Coordinative conjunction in Ancient Greek is particularly interesting from the typological point of view, because two coordinators, -τε and καί, are present in the same system and because the rare mixed pattern [A-τε καί B] frequently occurs. However, this pattern has received little scholarly attention, and conjunction in Ancient Greek has not been studied from a typological perspective. Such perspective is adopted here to analyse the conjunctive strategies in the second book of the Histories of Herodotus. Two statistically significant functional asymmetries are detected between the two more frequent strategies, the mixed pattern and monosyndetic καί. For the mixed pattern a possible origin is also proposed. Finally, conjunction in Herodotus’ Greek was already acquiring the characteristics of the Standard Average European area

Viability of Automatic Lexical Semantic Change Detection on a Diachronic Corpus of Literary Ancient Greek

We apply two measures of lexical semantic change detection to Word2Vec embeddings trained on a diachronic corpus of literary Ancient Greek texts. The two measures are the Vector Coherence, based on the comparison between vectors of the same word in different time periods, and the J, based on the Jaccard coefficient, which quantifies the overlap between the k nearest neighbours in each possible combination of time slices. Through the analysis of the most stable and unstable words detected with both measures, we show that the two measures are effective at finding non-changed words, while Vector Coherence seems to be more reliable than J at detecting changed words. Still, low J could indicate a real semantic change when the same word also has a low Vector Coherence. For both measures, the detection of changed words is hampered by the presence of lemmatization errors in the training corpus

Viability of Automatic Lexical Semantic Change Detection on a Diachronic Corpus of Literary Ancient Greek

We apply two measures of lexical semantic change detection to Word2Vec embeddings trained on a diachronic corpus of literary Ancient Greek texts. The two measures are the Vector Coherence, based on the comparison between vectors of the same word in different time periods, and the J, based on the Jaccard coefficient, which quantifies the overlap between the k nearest neighbours in each possible combination of time slices. Through the analysis of the most stable and unstable words detected with both measures, we show that the two measures are effective at finding non-changed words, while Vector Coherence seems to be more reliable than J at detecting changed words. Still, low J could indicate a real semantic change when the same word also has a low Vector Coherence. For both measures, the detection of changed words is hampered by the presence of lemmatization errors in the training corpus

Viability of Automatic Lexical Semantic Change Detection on a Diachronic Corpus of Literary Ancient Greek

We apply two measures of lexical semantic change detection to Word2Vec embeddings trained on a diachronic corpus of literary Ancient Greek texts. The two measures are the Vector Coherence, based on the comparison between vectors of the same word in different time periods, and the J, based on the Jaccard coefficient, which quantifies the overlap between the k nearest neighbours in each possible combination of time slices. Through the analysis of the most stable and unstable words detected with both measures, we show that the two measures are effective at finding non-changed words, while Vector Coherence seems to be more reliable than J at detecting changed words. Still, low J could indicate a real semantic change when the same word also has a low Vector Coherence. For both measures, the detection of changed words is hampered by the presence of lemmatization errors in the training corpus

Lexical semantic change detection for Ancient Greek:dataset creation and evaluation of a word-embedding-based technique

We create a benchmark for the evaluation of lexical semantic change detection in Ancient Greek and use it to assess the validity of two metrics of lexical semantic change on diachronic embeddings models. Stopponi et al. (2024b) assessed the viability of lexical semantic change detection for Ancient Greek with word2vec models, using two existing measures. However, only a manual evaluation was conducted since a benchmark for the evaluation of this task for Ancient Greek was still missing. We create such a benchmark by extracting cases of semantic change from close-reading studies in Ancient Greek lexical semantics. We also create a parallel benchmark of semantically stable items and assess the effectiveness of the most relevant of the two metrics in distinguishing semantically changed from semantically stable items. Finally, we qualitatively evaluate the candidates for semantic change detected by filtering words by low vector coherence value and high frequency. The results show that the method is effective at retrieving cases of semantic change, especially when coupled with frequency information, but also reinforce the idea that performing lexical semantic change detection on an ancient language and building a robust evaluation benchmark are particularly challenging tasks. In conclusion, we propose a constructive way to leverage this method as a research companion, by integrating it with the close-reading method

Determinazione dei composti fenolici liberi e legati in farina di teff mediante HPLC-ESI-TOF-MS

Il teff (Eragrostis tef) è uno pseudocereale originario dell’Etiopia che recentemente si sta diffondendo in vari Paesi. Infatti presenta numerose caratteristiche positive (buon contenuto di fibra e composti fenolici, indice glicemico ridotto, assenza di glutine) che potrebbero renderlo adatto alla formulazione di alimenti funzionali o arricchiti, destinati a categorie della popolazione con particolari esigenze (diabetici, celiaci, neonati). I dati attualmente disponibili riguardo il profilo fenolico del teff sono estremamente carenti. Pertanto, lo scopo di questa tesi è la determinazione dei composti fenolici liberi e legati in una farina di teff, mediante la combinazione della cromatografia liquida ad alte prestazioni e la spettrometria di massa con analizzatore a tempo di volo (HPLC-ESI-TOF-MS). L’estrazione dei fenoli liberi e legati dal campione di farina è stata condotta seguendo il metodo messo a punto da Verardo et al. (2011). Dall'analisi dei rispettivi base peak chromatogram sono stati individuati 15 composti fenolici nell'estratto solubile e 5 nell'estratto insolubile. I fenoli liberi riscontrati sono esclusivamente flavonoidi: 11 derivati dall'apigenina, 2 derivati dalla luteolina e 2 composti acetilati derivati dalla vitexina, identificati per la prima volta nella farina di teff. L'estratto insolubile risulta composto da acidi fenolici, rappresentati dall'acido ferulico e i suoi derivati. Non è stato possibile effettuare la determinazione dei composti fenolici totali mediante saggio al reattivo di Folin-Ciocalteu a causa dell’intorbidimento dell’estratto in fase di diluizione: questo ha confermato il limite di tale metodologia, sebbene ampiamente utilizzata, nella determinazione dei composti fenolici

Viability of Automatic Lexical Semantic Change Detection on a Diachronic Corpus of Literary Ancient Greek

We apply two measures of lexical semantic change detection to Word2Vec embeddings trained on a diachronic corpus of literary Ancient Greek texts. The two measures are the Vector Coherence, based on the comparison between vectors of the same word in different time periods, and the J, based on the Jaccard coefficient, which quantifies the overlap between the k nearest neighbours in each possible combination of time slices. Through the analysis of the most stable and unstable words detected with both measures, we show that the two measures are effective at finding non-changed words, while Vector Coherence seems to be more reliable than J at detecting changed words. Still, low J could indicate a real semantic change when the same word also has a low Vector Coherence. For both measures, the detection of changed words is hampered by the presence of lemmatization errors in the training corpus

Stress-Induced Reinstatement of Drug Seeking: 20 Years of Progress

In human addicts, drug relapse and craving are often provoked by stress. Since 1995, this clinical scenario has been studied using a rat model of stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. Here, we first discuss the generality of stress-induced reinstatement to different drugs of abuse, different stressors, and different behavioral procedures. We also discuss neuropharmacological mechanisms, and brain areas and circuits controlling stress-induced reinstatement of drug seeking. We conclude by discussing results from translational human laboratory studies and clinical trials that were inspired by results from rat studies on stress-induced reinstatement. Our main conclusions are (1) The phenomenon of stress-induced reinstatement, first shown with an intermittent footshock stressor in rats trained to self-administer heroin, generalizes to other abused drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, nicotine, and alcohol, and is also observed in the conditioned place preference model in rats and mice. This phenomenon, however, is stressor specific and not all stressors induce reinstatement of drug seeking. (2) Neuropharmacological studies indicate the involvement of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), noradrenaline, dopamine, glutamate, kappa/dynorphin, and several other peptide and neurotransmitter systems in stress-induced reinstatement. Neuropharmacology and circuitry studies indicate the involvement of CRF and noradrenaline transmission in bed nucleus of stria terminalis and central amygdala, and dopamine, CRF, kappa/dynorphin, and glutamate transmission in other components of the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system (ventral tegmental area, medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, and nucleus accumbens). (3) Translational human laboratory studies and a recent clinical trial study show the efficacy of alpha-2 adrenoceptor agonists in decreasing stress-induced drug craving and stress-induced initial heroin lapse