Search Results (56)

Background/Objectives: Motor creativity is a vital component of preschoolers’ growth and development. However, its underlying determinants remain largely underexplored. This study investigates the interrelationship among playful behavior, social profile, and motor creativity in preschool children, emphasizing its implications for holistic health and development. Methods: A total of 200 children and their kindergarten teachers from Greece participated in the study. The Children’s Playfulness Scale (CPS) was employed to assess the children’s playfulness, while a sociometric test was used to evaluate their social standing within peer groups. Motor creativity was measured through TCAM, a performance-based test focusing on fluency, imagination, and originality. Results: The findings revealed that the dimensions of playful behavior, particularly motor and social playfulness, significantly and positively influenced motor creativity, a core component of physical and mental health in early childhood. Conversely, certain aspects of social behavior had a negative association with imaginative capacities. Conclusions: The study underscores the critical role of movement-based playful activities in fostering children’s physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health. It highlights the need for educators to design developmentally appropriate motor play activities that cultivate creativity and social integration, promoting a balanced and health-oriented early education framework. The results contribute to educational policy and practice by reinforcing the importance of structured motor play in supporting preschoolers’ well-being and comprehensive development. Full article

Type II testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs) are the most common solid malignancies in young men and are classified into seminomas and non-seminomatous subtypes. Seminomas are known for their highly pro-inflammatory tumor microenvironment (TME) with abundant immune cell infiltration. While previous work has demonstrated that the seminoma-derived cell line TCam-2 induces immune cell activation in co-culture and undergoes phenotypic changes itself, the underlying mechanisms remained unclear. To explore the role of direct cell–cell interaction and the effects mediated by soluble mediators such as cytokines, we conducted co-culture experiments of TCam-2 cells with purified human T cells or monocytes, including Transwell assays and treatments with IL-6, TNFα, or their respective blocking antibodies Tocilizumab and Adalimumab. In this way, we found that immune cell activation, indicated by enhanced secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines and an upregulation of activation markers, strongly depended on direct physical contact between both cell types. Nonetheless, we also unveiled the role of soluble mediators in both immune cell activation and promoting a shift in TCam-2 cells from a seminoma-like phenotype to a more dedifferentiated phenotype, suggesting that cytokines critically shape the TME. These observations highlight the complexity of tumor–immune interactions in the seminoma microenvironment, offering new insight into immune-driven dynamics in TGCTs. Full article

Content Addressable Memories (CAMs) are pivotal in high-speed packet processing systems, enabling rapid data lookup operations essential for applications such as routing, switching, and network security. While traditional Register-Transfer Level (RTL) methodologies have been extensively used to implement CAM architectures on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), they often involve complex, time-consuming design processes with limited flexibility. In this paper, we propose a novel templated High-Level Synthesis (HLS)-based approach for the design and implementation of CAM architectures such as Binary CAMs (BCAMs) and Ternary CAMs (TCAMs) optimized for data plane packet processing. Our HLS-based methodology leverages the parallel processing capabilities of FPGAs through employing various design parameters and optimization directives while significantly reducing development time and enhancing design portability. This paper also presents architectural design and optimization strategies to offer a fine-tuned CAM solution for networking-related arbitrary use cases. Experimental results demonstrate that HLSCAM achieves a high throughput, reaching up to 31.18 Gbps, 9.04 Gbps, and 33.04 Gbps in the $256\times 128$, $512\times 36$, and $1024\times 150$ CAM sizes, making it a competitive solution for high-speed packet processing on FPGAs. Full article

Patients with treatment-refractory/relapsing germ cell tumors (GCTs) have a dismal prognosis due to a lack of any effective therapy. Moreover, the efficacy of newly approved targeted therapies remains unexplored for cisplatin-resistant GCTs. Previously, it was demonstrated that folate receptor α (FRα) is overexpressed in many tumor types and efficiently targeted by the antibody–drug conjugate (ADC) mirvetuximab soravtansine (MIRV) in cisplatin-resistant cancers. We hypothesized that FRα represents an attractive target for treating treatment-refractory GCTs. We determined the expression of the FOLR1 gene in a broad range of GCT cell lines and tumor xenografts. We tested the antitumor efficacy of MIRV on cisplatin-resistant GCT cells in vitro and explored the ability of MIRV treatment to induce a bystander effect in the direct coculture of FRα-high and FRα-low cells. We found that the FOLR1 gene has significantly higher expression in testicular GCTs (TGCTs) than in normal testicular tissue. FOLR1 is highly expressed in the TCam2, JEG3, JAR, and NOY1 cell lines and their respective cisplatin-resistant variants. MIRV treatment induced apoptosis and a potent antiproliferative effect in cisplatin-resistant GCT cells in adherent and 3D spheroid cultures in vitro. A significant decrease in FRα-low 2102EP_R_NL cells was observed in the presence of FRα-high NOY1_R_SK in the presence of 12.5 nM MIRV, showing a potent bystander effect in the direct coculture. Immunohistochemical analysis confirmed significantly higher Folr1 protein expression in patients with TGCTs postchemotherapy than in chemo-naïve patients, as well as in patients with an unfavorable prognosis. In this study, we present data suggesting that the FOLR1 gene is highly expressed in (T)GCT cells in vitro and in vivo, and anti-FRα-targeting therapies should be investigated as a treatment modality in a subset of patients with TGCTs. Moreover, MIRV induced significant antitumor and bystander effects, thus showing its potential in further preclinical exploration and drug repurposing for a salvage treatment regime in refractory (T)GCT disease. Full article

High-strength polymer fibers such as nylon 6, nylon 6,6, and polyethylene are utilized to produce Twisted and Coiled Artificial Muscles (TCAMs) through the twisting of low-cost fibers. These artificial muscles exhibit high displacement and specific power, particularly under electrothermal actuation, which requires conductive elements. An experimental setup was developed to produce, thermally treat, and characterize commercially available nylon 6,6 fibers coated with silver. The results demonstrate that TCAMs can contract by over 15% and generate forces up to 2.5 N with minimal energy input. Key factors such as motor speed, applied load, and fiber geometry affect the overall performance. Full article

Background/Objectives: Motor creativity and physical activity are essential to early childhood development, impacting physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development. This study investigates the relationships among motor creativity, motor working memory (MSTM), screen time, and physical activity (PA) in kindergarten children, focusing on the mediating roles of cognitive functions and screen time. Methods: Data were collected from 124 Arab Israeli kindergarten children through assessments of Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM) for motor creativity and the Hand Movement Test for MSTM. Parents reported the children’s screen time and days engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Results: The results show significant positive associations between motor creativity and both MSTM and PA, underscoring the role of cognitive processes in creative motor expression. Linear regression and mediation analyses showed that MSTM significantly mediates the relationship between PA and motor creativity. Conversely, screen time negatively correlates with PA and motor creativity, serving as a significant mediator that restricts opportunities for physical and creative activities. Conclusions: This study emphasizes the bidirectional relationship between PA and motor creativity, wherein diverse physical activities stimulate creativity, and creative movements encourage active participation. The combined mediating effects of MSTM and screen time highlight the complexity of these relationships, suggesting the need for integrated interventions. The findings inform early childhood education by advocating for strategies that promote physical activity, enhance cognitive functions, and limit excessive screen time, fostering holistic development in young children. Full article

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) revolutionizes network management by decoupling control plane functionality from data plane devices, enabling the centralized control and programmability of network behavior. This paper uses the ternary system to improve the Central Processing Unit (CPU) inside the SDN controller to enhance network management. The Multiple-Valued Logic (MVL) circuit shows remarkable improvement compared to the binary circuit regarding the chip area, propagation delay, and energy consumption. Moreover, the Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor (CNTFET) shows improvement compared to other transistor technologies regarding energy efficiency and circuit speed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a ternary design has been applied inside the CPU of an SDN controller. Earlier studies focused on Ternary Content-Addressable Memory (TCAM) in SDN. This paper proposes a new 1-trit Ternary Full Adder (TFA) to decrease the propagation delay and the Power–Delay Product (PDP). The proposed design is compared to the latest 17 designs, including 15 designs that are 1-trit TFA CNTFET-based, 2-bit binary FA FinFET-based, and 2-bit binary FA CMOS-based, using the HSPICE simulator, to optimize the CPU utilization in SDN environments, thereby enhancing programmability. The results show the success of the proposed design in reducing the propagation delays by over 99% compared to the 2-bit binary FA CMOS-based design, over 78% compared to the 2-bit binary FA FinFET-based design, over 91% compared to the worst-case TFA, and over 49% compared to the best-case TFAs. Full article

Hateful memes are malicious and biased sentiment information widely spread on the internet. Detecting hateful memes differs from traditional multimodal tasks because, in conventional tasks, visual and textual information align semantically. However, the challenge in detecting hateful memes lies in their unique multimodal nature, where images and text in memes may be weak or unrelated, requiring models to understand the content and perform multimodal reasoning. To address this issue, we introduce a multimodal fine-grained hateful memes detection model named “TCAM”. The model leverages advanced encoding techniques from TweetEval and CLIP and introduces enhanced Cross-Attention and Cross-Mask Mechanisms (CAM) in the feature fusion stage to improve multimodal correlations. It effectively embeds fine-grained features of data and image descriptions into the model through transfer learning. This paper uses the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) as the primary metric to evaluate the model’s discriminatory ability. This approach achieved an AUROC score of 0.8362 and an accuracy score of 0.764 on the Facebook Hateful Memes Challenge (FHMC) dataset, confirming its high discriminatory capability. The TCAM model demonstrates relatively superior performance compared to ensemble machine learning methods. Full article

Although the von Neumann architecture-based computing system has been used for a long time, its limitations in data processing, energy consumption, etc. have led to research on various devices and circuit systems suitable for logic-in-memory (LiM) computing applications. In this paper, we analyze the temperature-dependent device and circuit characteristics of the floating gate field effect transistor (FGFET) source drain barrier (SDB) and FGFET central shallow barrier (CSB) identified in previous papers, and their applicability to LiM applications is specifically confirmed. These FGFETs have the advantage of being much more compatible with existing silicon-based complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processes compared to devices using new materials such as ferroelectrics for LiM computing. Utilizing the 32 nm technology node, the leading-edge node where the planar metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor structure is applied, FGFET devices were analyzed in TCAD, and an environment for analyzing circuits in HSPICE was established. To seamlessly connect FGFET-based devices and circuit analyses, compact models of FGFET-SDB and -CSBs were developed and applied to the design of ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM) and full adder (FA) circuits for LiM. In addition, depression and potential for application of FGFET devices to neural networks were analyzed. The temperature-dependent characteristics of the TCAM and FA circuits with FGFETs were analyzed as an indicator of energy and delay time, and the appropriate number of CSBs should be applied. Full article

Ternary Content-Addressable Memory (TCAM) is used for storing the flow tables in software-defined networking (SDN)-based OpenFlow switches. However, the TCAM can store only a certain number of flow tables (8000). Moreover, when the switch flow tables need to be updated due to the link failure in the SDN, further updates may be lost due to the flow tables limit of the TCAM space. Hence, to resolve this issue, other memories need to be used in conjunction with TCAM to enhance the memory operations of TCAM. When considering which flash memory technology is to be used in conjunction with TCAM, we need to balance several factors to ensure optimal performance, speed, endurance, reliability, integration complexity, and cost-effectiveness. Hence, it leads to a multi-criteria decision-making problem regarding the selection of other memory technologies such as 3D XPoint, Magnetoresistive RAM, Resistive RAM, and Ferroelectric RAM. In this paper, we use the analytical network process (ANP) method to select the suitable technology in conjunction with TCAM, considering the features of the memory technologies for Software-Defined Internet-of-Things (SD-IoT). We provide a comprehensive numerical model leveraging the ANP to rank the memory technologies regarding their weights. The highest weights identify the most suitable technology for TCAM. We perform simulations to show the effectiveness of the mathematical model utilizing the ANP. The results show that the suggested methodology reduces the recovery delay, improves the packets received ratio (PRR), decreases the jitter, and increases the throughput. Full article

Energy consumption is a significant concern in daily life, often neglected in terms of cost and environmental impact. Since IT networks play an essential role in our daily routines, energy-saving in this area is crucial. However, the implementation of energy efficiency solutions in this field have to ensure that the network performance is minimally affected. Traditional networks encounter difficulties in achieving this goal. Software-Defined Networks (SDN), which have gained popularity in the past decade, offer easy-to-use opportunities to increase energy efficiency. Features like central controllability and quick programmability can help to reduce energy consumption. In this article, a new algorithm named the Modified Heuristic Algorithm for Energy Saving (MHAES) is presented, which was compared to eight commonly used methods in different topologies for energy efficiency. The results indicate that by maintaining an appropriate load balance, one can save more energy than in case of using some other well-known procedures by applying a threshold value based on forecast, keeping only a minimal number of nodes in an active state, and ensuring that nodes not participating in packet transmission remain in sleep mode. Full article

In software-defined networking (SDN), the traffic forwarding delay highly depends on the latency associated with updating the forwarding rules in flow tables. With the increase in fine-grained flow control requirements, due to the flexible control capabilities of SDN, more rules are being inserted and removed from flow tables. Moreover, the matching fields of these rules might overlap since multiple control domains might generate different rules for similar flows. This overlap implies dependency relationships among the rules, imposing various restrictions on forwarding entries during updates, e.g., by following update orders or storing entries at specified locations, especially in flow tables implemented using ternary content addressable memory (TCAM); otherwise, mismatching or packet dropping will occur. It usually takes a while to resolve and maintain dependencies during updates, which hinders high forwarding efficiency. To reduce the delay associated with updating dependent rules, in this paper, we propose an updating algorithm for TCAM-based flow tables. We formulate the TCAM maintenance process as an NP-hard problem and analyze the inefficiency of existing moving approaches. To solve the problem, we propose an optimal moving chain for single rule updates and provide theoretical proof for its minimum moving steps. For multiple rules arriving at a switch simultaneously, we designed a dynamic approach to update concurrent entries; it is able to update multiple rules heuristically within a restricted TCAM region. As the update efficiency concerns dependencies among rules, we evaluate our flow table by updating algorithms with different dependency complexities. The results show that our approach achieves about 6% fewer moving steps than existing approaches. The advantage is more pronounced when the flow table is heavily utilized and rules have longer dependency chains. Full article

Packet classification based on rules of packet header fields is the key technology for enabling software-defined networking (SDN). Ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) is a widely used hardware for packet classification; however, commercially available TCAM chips have only limited storage. As the number of supported header fields in SDN increases, the number of supported rules in a TCAM chip is reduced. In this work, we present a novel scheme to enable packet classification using TCAM with entries that are narrower than rules by storing the most representative field of a ruleset in TCAM. Due to the fact that not all rules can be distinguished using one field, our scheme employs a TCAM-based multimatch packet classification technique to ensure correctness. We further develop approaches to reduce redundant TCAM accesses for multimatch packet classification. Although our scheme requires additional TCAM accesses, it supports packet classification upon long rules with narrow TCAM entries, and drastically reduces the required TCAM storage. Our experimental results show that our scheme requires a moderate number of additional TCAM accesses and consumes much less storage compared to the basic TCAM-based packet classification. Thus, it can provide the required scalability for long rules required by potential applications of SDN. Full article

Background and Objectives: Ejaculatory dysfunction (EjD) is a common male sexual disorder that includes premature ejaculation, delayed ejaculation, retrograde ejaculation, and anejaculation. Although psychological and pharmacological treatments are available, traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) is reportedly used. However, the clinical evidence for TCAM in EjD remains unclear. Therefore, this study aims to systematically review human clinical trials investigating the use of TCAM to treat EjD. Materials and Methods: A systematic review of the literature following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines was conducted by searching Scopus and PubMed databases. Controlled clinical trials investigating a cohort of male patients diagnosed primarily with EjD and undergoing any TCAM intervention compared to any comparison group were included. Quality of the studies was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool for randomized controlled trials. Results: Following article screening, 22 articles were included. Of these, 21 investigated TCAM in premature ejaculation, and only 1 investigated TCAM in retrograde ejaculation. Different TCAM categories included studies that investigated lifestyle, exercise and/or physical activities (n = 7); herbal medicine supplements (n = 5); topical herbal applications (n = 4); acupuncture or electroacupuncture (n = 3); vitamin, mineral and/or nutraceutical supplements (n = 1); hyaluronic acid penile injection (n = 1); and music therapy (n = 1). Only 31.8% (n = 7) of the included studies were found to have a low risk of bias. The available studies were widely heterogenous in the TCAM intervention investigated and comparison groups used. However, the included studies generally showed improved outcomes intra-group and when compared to placebo. Conclusions: Different TCAM interventions may have an important role particularly in the management of PE. However, more studies using standardized interventions are needed. Full article

In this paper, we propose a power-efficient memory operation, selective match line precharge, based on an analysis of power consumption in ternary content-addressable memory (TCAM). A statistical study reveals that, on average, 58% of power dissipation related to the match line operation is saved by deactivating the unnecessary swing of match lines. The improvement has been simulated and proved using 180 nm CMOS technology. Full article