State-level tracking of COVID-19 in the United States

As of 1st June 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 104,232 confirmed or probable COVID-19-related deaths in the US. This was more than twice the number of deaths reported in the next most severely impacted country. We jointly model the US epidemic at the state-level, using publicly available deathdata within a Bayesian hierarchical semi-mechanistic framework. For each state, we estimate the number of individuals that have been infected, the number of individuals that are currently infectious and the time-varying reproduction number (the average number of secondary infections caused by an infected person). We use changes in mobility to capture the impact that non-pharmaceutical interventions and other behaviour changes have on therate of transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We estimate thatRtwas only below one in 23 states on 1st June. We also estimate that 3.7% [3.4%-4.0%] of the total population of the US had been infected, with wide variation between states, and approximately 0.01% of the population was infectious. We demonstrate good 3 week model forecasts of deaths with low error and good coverage of our credible intervals

High Frequency Jitter Estimator for SoCs

International audienceBest Paper Award This paper presents an Embedded Test Instrument (ETI) for the estimation of the High Frequency (HF) jitter of an observed clock signal. The ETI uses a second reference clock for under-sampling the observed signal similar to previous approaches. However, the analysis of the test response does not require the construction of the Cumulative Distributed Function (CDF) of the jitter as in previous approaches. Instead, the HF jitter of the input observed signal is transformed at the output of the ETI into a digital value that corresponds to a number of unwanted signal transitions. We demonstrate in this paper that the transfer function of the ETI defined by the ratio of the number of unwanted signal transitions and the input HF jitter is linear. This property leads to a simple circuit implementation. The linearity of the ETI is demonstrated firstly by behavioral simulation, using a theoretical model of the output of the under-sampling process, and secondly by transistor-level simulation using the 65 nm CMOS bulk technology by ST Microelectronics. We also present experimental measurements that have been carried out using an FPGA-based test platform to validate the linearity of the transfer function in the presence of non-idealities that can affect the ETI. Finally, we demonstrate the exploitation of the ETI within Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) produced in high-volume by ST Microelectronics

A Functional Power Evaluation Flow for Defining Test Power Limits during At-Speed Delay Testing

International audienc

Dental Pulp Stem Cell (DPSC) Isolation, Characterization, and Differentiation

3siDental pulp stem cells (DPSC) have been proposed as an alternative to pluripotent stem cells to study multilineage differentiation in vitro and for therapeutic application. Standard culture media for isolation and expansion of stem cells includes animal sera or animal-derived matrix components (e.g., Matrigel ®). However, animal-derived reagents raise significant concerns with respect to the translational ability of these cells due to the possibility of infection and/or severe immune reaction. For these reasons clinical grade substitutes to animal components are needed in order for stem cells to reach their full therapeutic potential. In this chapter we detail a method for isolation and proliferation of DPSC in a chemically defi ned medium containing a low percentage of human serum. We demonstrate that in this defi ned culture medium a 1.25 % human serum component sufficiently replaces fetal bovine serum. This method allows for isolation of a morphologically and phenotypically uniform population of DPSCs from dental pulp tissue. DPSCs represent a rapidly proliferating cell population that readily differentiates into the osteoblastic, neuronal, myocytic, and hepatocytic lineages. This multilineage capacity of these DPSCs suggests that they may have a more broad therapeutic application than lineage-restricted adult stem cell populations such as mesenchymal stem cells. Further the culture protocol presented here makes these cells more amenable to human application than current expansion techniques for other pluripotent stem cells (embryonic stem cell lines or induced pluripotent stem cells).nonenoneFerro F.; Spelat R.; Baheney C.S.Ferro, F.; Spelat, R.; Baheney, C. S