A remarkable result in probability theory is the "three-sigma rule," which is a generic name for theorems that bound the probability that a univariate random variable will appear near the center of its distribution. This article discusses the familiar three-sigma rule for the normal distribution, a less-familiar rule for unimodal [...]

The post The three-sigma rule appeared first on The DO Loop.

The post details a highly restrictive environment where employees are forbidden from basic actions like looking away from their screens or using their phones.

Hi everyone,

I'm designing a digital chip that will be fabricated. I have a HDL top module that includes several submodules inside it. I want to define the position of some of the submodules during the PnR so that later I can specify there positions in the Micrograph photo after the IC fabrication. When I perform the PnR using Innovus, I always got a layout shape where the submodules seems to be flatted. I wonder if there is a way to specify the placement of each submodule in my top module  (maybe in the tcl file) during the PnR so later I can define there positions in the micrograph photo. 

Thanks in Advance!

Please give me some ideas. Thank you very much.

Read this blog to know how you can easily create and insert connect modules using Spectre AMS Designer with the Verilog-AMS standard language defined by Accellera. (read more)

Have you ever wanted to write a DRC rule deck to check for space or width constraints on polygons? Or have you wondered how the multiple lines of an LVS rule deck extract and conduct a comparison between the schematic and layout? Maybe you've been curious about the role of rule deck writers in creating high-quality designs ready for tape-out.

If any of these questions interest you, there is good news: the latest version (v23.1) of the Physical Verification Rules Writer (PVLRW) course is designed to teach you rule deck writing. This free 16-hour online course includes audio and labs designed to make your learning experience comfortable and flexible. Whether you are new to the concept or an experienced CAD/PDK engineer, the course is structured to enhance your rule deck writing skills.

The PVLRW course covers six core modules: Layer Processing, DRC Rules, Layout Extraction, ERC and LVS Rules, Schematic Netlisting, and Coloring Rules. There are also three optional appendix sections. Each module explains relevant rules with syntax, concepts, graphics, examples, and case studies.

This course is based on tool versions PEGASUS231 and Virtuoso Studio IC231.

Pegasus Input and Output

Pegasus is a cloud-ready physical verification signoff solution that enables engineers to support faster delivery of advanced-node integrated circuits (ICs) to market.

Pegasus requires input data in the form of layout geometry, schematic netlists, and rules that direct the tool operation. The rules fall into two categories: those that describe the fabrication process and those that control the job-specific operation.

Pegasus provides log and report files, netlists, databases, and error databases as output.

Overview of Pegasus Rule File

The rule decks written in Physical Verification Language (PVL) work for the Cadence PV signoff tools Pegasus and PVS (Physical Verification System).   

The PVL rules are placed in a file that gets selected in a run from the GUI or the command line, as the user directs. PVL rules may be on separate lines within the file and can also be contained in named rule blocks.

Each line of code starts with a PVL rule that uses prefix type notation. It consists of a keyword followed by options, input layer or variable names, and output layer or variable names.

A rule block has the format of the keyword rule, followed by a rule name you wish to give it, followed by an opening curly brace. You enter the rules you wish to perform, followed by a closing curly brace on the last separate line.

  Sample Rule deck with individual lines of code and rule blocks.

DRC Rules

The first step in a typical Pegasus flow is a Design Rule Check (DRC), which verifies that layout geometries conform to the minimum width, spacing, and other fabrication process rules required by an IC foundry. Each foundry specifies its own process-dependent rules that must be met by the layout design.

There are three types of DRC rules: layer definition rules, layer derivation rules, and DRC design check rules. Layer definition rules identify the layers contained in the input layout database, and layer derivation rules derive additional layers from the original input layers, allowing the tool to test the design against specific foundry requirements using the design check rules.

A sample DRC Rule deck

A layout view displaying the DRC violations

LVS Rules

The Pegasus Layout Versus Schematic (LVS) tool compares the layout netlist with the schematic netlist to check for discrepancies.

There are two essential LVS rule sets: LVS extraction rules and comparison rules. LVS extraction rules help extract drawn devices and connectivity information from the input layout geometry data and outputs into a layout netlist. The LVS extraction rule set also includes the layer definition, derivation, extraction, connectivity, and net listing rules.

LVS comparison rules are associated with comparing the extracted layout netlist to a schematic netlist.

A sample LVS Rule deck. 

TCL, Macros, and Conditional commands

Tcl is supported and used in various Pegasus functionalities, such as Pegasus rule files and Pegasus configurator. Macros are functional templates that are defined once and can be used multiple times in a rule file. Conditional Commands are used to process or skip specific commands in the rule file.

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Related Resources

About Knowledge Booster Training Bytes

Knowledge Booster Training Bytes is an online journal that relays information about Cadence Training videos, online courses, and upcoming webinars in the Learning section of the Cadence Learning and Support portal. This blog category brings you direct links to these videos, courses, and other related material on a regular basis. Subscribe to receive email notifications about our latest Custom IC Design blog posts.

Read this blog to know more about the innovation behind Universal Connect Modules (UCM).(read more)

Hi

the signal SPI_SCLK belongs to TWO Spacing CLASSES: CLS_SP_SPI and CLS_SP_SPI_CLOCK

I then assign TWO different SPACING RULES to each class : CLS_SP_SPI  > 2H and CLS_SP_SPI_CLOCK > 3.5H

Which SPACING RULE will inherit the signal SPI_SCLK ??

Is it possible to manually define the PRIORITY on Design Rules ??

Hi

I have fixed a SPACING RULE (SP1) for a CLASS_DIFF_PAIR whereas for via associated to the net (DP_VIA), the DISTANCE > 60mils respect to ANY other vias (PTH, BB, TEST vias)

Now my problem is that this rules should NOT be applied for GND VIAS (STICHING VIA) which must be placed at a distance < 40mils respect to DP_VIA

How to create an exemption to the SPACING RULE (SP1)?

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso — Burkina Faso's military regime, in power since a 2022 coup, will extend its rule for five years under an accord adopted during national consultations on Saturday, the talks' chairman said.  "The duration of the transition is fixed at 60 months from July 2, 2024," Colonel Moussa Diallo, chairman of the organizing committee of the national dialogue process, said after the talks.  He added that coup leader and acting president Ibrahim Traore could run in any elections at the end of the transition period.  What was supposed to be a two-day national dialogue began earlier Saturday, ostensibly to chart a way back to civilian rule for the West African nation beset by jihadi violence.  The army has governed Burkina Faso since 2022, carrying out two coups that it said were justified in large part by the persistent insecurity.  Jihadi rebels affiliated with al Qaida and the Islamic State group have waged a grinding insurgency since 2015 that has killed thousands and displaced millions.  An initial national dialogue had resulted in a charter that installed Traore as president and put in place a government and a legislative assembly.  Under the new charter, quotas will no longer be used to assign seats in the assembly to members of traditional parties. Instead, "patriotism" will be the only criteria for selecting deputies.  "You have just rewritten a new page in the history of our country," said Minister of Territorial Affairs Emile Zerbo, who opened the meeting on Saturday morning.  The initial charter set the transition to civilian rule at 21 months, with the deadline set to expire July 1.  But Traore had repeatedly warned that holding elections would be difficult given the perilous security situation.  The new charter also calls for a new body called the "Korag" to "monitor and control the implementation of the country's strategic vision in all areas and through all means." Its composition and operations are at the discretion of the president.  Civil society representatives, the security and defense forces and lawmakers in the transitional assembly took part in the weekend talks, which most political parties boycotted.  Human rights groups have accused Burkina Faso's junta leaders of abuses against civilians during their military campaigns against jihadis, and of silencing media and opposition leaders.   After taking power, the coup leaders expelled French troops and diplomats, and have instead turned to Russia for military assistance.   

The 15 August 2021 Taliban takeover of Afghanistan devastated the lives of millions of Afghans. But the rights and freedoms of women and girls in particular have been progressively trampled by a series of edicts that have created a virtual system of gender apartheid.

The Nuggets are the top seed in Group C in the Western Conference.

A new technique uses glowing molecules, laser light and microscopes to measure distances as minuscule as 0.1 nanometres – the width of a typical atom

Sea-floor nodules raise oxygen levels in the deep ocean, suggesting they may have a valuable role in ecosystems and adding to concerns about the impact of deep-sea mining

In the foundations of a Maya temple, researchers found the charred bones of royal individuals – possibly evidence of a fiery ritual to mark the end of one dynasty and the beginning of another

Several psychological biases undermine our ability to make new friends. Understand them and you’ll know the secrets to building meaningful relationships that last

The technologies introduced by the Romans after they conquered Britain led to the kind of economic growth seen in the industrial age

Title: Obama Administration Offers New Rules for Religious Objections to Health Care Law
Category: Health News
Created: 8/25/2014 9:35:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/25/2014 12:00:00 AM

Title: Getting Back to School Sleep Schedules
Category: Health News
Created: 8/23/2014 9:39:00 AM
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Category: Health News
Created: 8/27/2014 4:35:00 PM
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Category: Health News
Created: 8/26/2015 12:00:00 AM
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The study of biological mechanisms, while crucial, cannot fully explain complex phenomena like the instinct to eat. The mind–body connection, as exemplified by the concept of "voodoo death," highlights the profound influence of belief and cultural context on physiology. Indigenous knowledge systems further emphasize the interconnectedness of humans with their environment. Recent discoveries in gut–brain communication reveal the intricate neural circuits that drive our visceral desires, but a holistic approach that integrates both physiological mechanisms and the subjective experience of life, informed by diverse cultural perspectives, will be essential to truly understand what it means to be alive.

Bacterial regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) are important players to control gene expression. In Staphylococcus aureus, SprC is an antivirulent trans-acting sRNA known to base-pair with the major autolysin atl mRNA, preventing its translation. Using MS2-affinity purification coupled with RNA sequencing, we looked for its sRNA-RNA interactome and identified 14 novel mRNA targets. In vitro biochemical investigations revealed that SprC binds two of them, czrB and deoD, and uses a single accessible region to regulate its targets, including Atl translation. Unlike Atl regulation, the characterization of the SprC-czrB interaction pinpointed a destabilization of the czrAB cotranscript, leading to a decrease of the mRNA level that impaired CzrB zinc efflux pump expression. On a physiological standpoint, we showed that SprC expression is detrimental to combat against zinc toxicity. In addition, phagocyctosis assays revealed a significant, but moderate, increase of czrB mRNA levels in a sprC-deleted mutant, indicating a functional link between SprC and czrB upon internalization in macrophages, and suggesting a role in resistance to both oxidative and zinc bursts. Altogether, our data uncover a novel pathway in which SprC is implicated, highlighting the multiple strategies used by S. aureus to balance virulence using an RNA regulator.

Early detection of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) can facilitate timely drug development decisions, prevent unnecessary restrictions on patient enrollment, resulting in clinical study populations that are not representative of the indicated study population, and allow for appropriate dose adjustments to ensure safety in clinical trials. All of these factors contribute to a streamlined drug approval process and enhanced patient safety. Here we describe a new approach for early prediction of the magnitude of change in exposure for cytochrome P450 (P450) CYP3A4-related DDIs of small-molecule anticancer drugs based on the model-based extrapolation of human-CYP3A4-transgenic mice pharmacokinetics to humans. Victim drugs brigatinib and lorlatinib were evaluated with the new approach in combination with the perpetrator drugs itraconazole and rifampicin. Predictions of the magnitude of change in exposure deviated at most 0.99- to 1.31-fold from clinical trial results for inhibition with itraconazole, whereas exposure predictions for the induction with rifampicin were less accurate, with deviations of 0.22- to 0.48-fold. Results for the early prediction of DDIs and their clinical impact appear promising for CYP3A4 inhibition, but validation with more victim and perpetrator drugs is essential to evaluate the performance of the new method.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE:

There has been a distinction made in the 2001 Canadian C-Spine Rule regarding patients 65 and older and younger than 65 years of age as far as indications for cervical spine CT scanning. We sought to determine if there are differences in the symptoms, mechanisms of injury, fracture locations, and types that are still relevant in 2024.

Affibody molecules are small (6-kDa) affinity proteins generated by directed evolution for specific binding to various target molecules. The first step in this workflow involves the generation of an affibody library, which can then be used for biopanning using multiple display methods. This protocol describes selection from affibody libraries using display on Staphylococcus carnosus. Display of affibodies on staphylococci is very efficient and straightforward because of the single cell membrane and the use of a construct with a constitutive promoter. The workflow involves display of affibody libraries on the surface of S. carnosus cells, followed by screening and selection of binders using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). The transformation of DNA libraries into S. carnosus is less efficient and more complicated than for Escherichia coli. Because of this, staphylococcal display is suitable for affinity maturation or other protein-engineering efforts that are not dependent on very high diversity, and thus magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) is often not required before FACS. However, MACS is an option, and MACS procedures used for E. coli can easily be adapted for use in S. carnosus if needed.

Affibody molecules are small (6-kDa) affinity proteins generated by directed evolution for specific binding to various target molecules. The first step in this workflow involves the generation of an affibody library, which can then be used for selection via multiple display methods. This protocol describes selection from affibody libraries by Escherichia coli cell surface display. With this method, high-diversity libraries of 10¹¹ can be displayed on the cell surface. The method involves two steps for selection of binders from high-diversity libraries: magnetic-activated cell sorting (MACS) and fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). MACS is used first to enrich the library in target-binding clones and to decrease diversity to a size that can be effectively screened and sorted in the flow cytometer in a reasonable time (typically <10⁷ cells). The protocol is based on methodology using an AIDA-I autotransporter for display on the outer membrane, but the general procedures can also be adjusted and used for other types of autotransporters or alternative E. coli display methods.

Affibody molecules are small (6-kDa) affinity proteins generated by directed evolution for specific binding to various target molecules. The first step in this workflow involves the generation of an affibody library. This is then followed by amplification of the library, which can then be used for biopanning using multiple methods. This protocol describes amplification of affibody libraries, followed by biopanning using phage display and analysis of the selection output. The general procedure is mainly for selection of first-generation affibody molecules from large naive (unbiased) libraries, typically yielding affibody hits with affinities in the low nanomolar range. For selection from affinity maturation libraries with the aim of isolating variants of even higher affinities, the procedure is similar, but parameters such as target concentration and washing are adjusted to achieve the proper stringency.

Affibody molecules are small, robust, and versatile affinity proteins currently being explored for therapeutic, diagnostic, and biotechnological applications. Surface-exposed residues on the affibody scaffold are randomized to create large affibody libraries from which novel binding specificities to virtually any protein target can be generated using combinatorial protein engineering. Affibody molecules have the potential to complement—or even surpass—current antibody-based technologies, exhibiting multiple desirable properties, such as high stability, affinity, and specificity, efficient tissue penetration, and straightforward modular extension of functional domains. It has been shown in both preclinical and clinical studies that affibody molecules are safe, efficacious, and valuable alternatives to antibodies for specific targeting in the context of in vivo diagnostics and therapy. Here, we provide a general background of affibody molecules, give examples of reported applications, and briefly summarize the methodology for affibody generation.

PURPOSE

Chest pain frequently poses a diagnostic challenge for general practitioners (GPs). Utilizing risk stratification tools might help GPs to rule out acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and make appropriate referral decisions. We conducted a systematic review of studies evaluating risk stratification tools for chest pain in primary care settings, both with and without troponin assays. Our aims were to assess the performance of tools for ruling out ACS and to provide a comprehensive review of the current evidence.

The aim of this work is to test whether the use of a transparent capsule affects the residual capsule weight after inhalation as a surrogate of the inhaled delivered dose for patients with non-reversible chronic airway disease. Researchers conducted an observational cross-sectional study with patients using a single-dose dry powder inhaler. The weight of the capsule was measured with a precision microbalance before and after inhalation. Ninety-one patients were included, of whom 63 (69.2%) used a transparent capsule. Inhalation with a transparent capsule achieved a weight decrease of 30.1% vs 8.6% for devices with an opaque capsule (P <0.001). These data reinforce the need to provide patients with mechanisms that verify the correct inhalation technique.

"I hear journalists are wondering if I’ve put my name in for the Scottish Parliament. Big news re 2026 coming in the next hour…watch this space."

Former MP Joanna Cherry has said that the SNP rules which prevented her from standing for a seat at Holyrood would not block Stephen Flynn from doing the same.  

Chris walks in on Anna playing Tactics Ogre. Alex is head of the elemental winds. And Kelley's cat stole a banana.

The post RPG Cast – Episode 669: “The 1 of 1 Ring to Rule Them All” appeared first on RPGamer.

Real gamblers play russian roulette with shotguns. That is the core concept of Buckshot Roulette, the Inscryption-looking game of blinksweat and bulletworry. It's been out for a while now but the developers have just added a fun extra - a 4-person multiplayer mode.

Read more

NASA is investigating a strange noise coming through the speaker on Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which has been beset with technical issues

Cracks running through samples of asteroid Ryugu were probably formed by the repeated thawing and freezing of water inside it, which could have helped asteroids like this carry the building blocks of life to early Earth

In Still Wakes the Deep, you play as a Glaswegian electrician on a 1970s oil rig. The well-crafted setting gives way to horror, but I wish I could linger in mundanity for longer, says Jacob Aron

Emma Raducanu struck a deal to return to one of her favourite tournaments.

The software used to control a robot is normally highly adapted to its specific physical set up. But now researchers have created a single general-purpose robotic control policy that can operate robotic arms, wheeled robots, quadrupeds, and even drones.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to applying machine learning to robotics is the paucity of data. While computer vision and natural language processing can piggyback off the vast quantities of image and text data found on the Internet, collecting robot data is costly and time-consuming.

To get around this, there have been growing efforts to pool data collected by different groups on different kinds of robots, including the Open X-Embodiment and DROID datasets. The hope is that training on diverse robotics data will lead to “positive transfer,” which refers to when skills learned from training on one task help to boost performance on another.

The problem is that robots often have very different embodiments—a term used to describe their physical layout and suite of sensors and actuators—so the data they collect can vary significantly. For instance, a robotic arm might be static, have a complex arrangement of joints and fingers, and collect video from a camera on its wrist. In contrast, a quadruped robot is regularly on the move and relies on force feedback from its legs to maneuver. The kinds of tasks and actions these machines are trained to carry out are also diverse: The arm may pick and place objects, while the quadruped needs keen navigation.

That makes training a single AI model for robots on these large collections of data challenging, says Homer Walke, a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley. So far, most attempts have either focused on data from a narrower selection of similar robots or researchers have manually tweaked data to make observations from different robots more similar. But in research to be presented at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) in Munich in November, they unveiled a new model called CrossFormer that can train on data from a diverse set of robots and control them just as well as specialized control policies.

“We want to be able to train on all of this data to get the most capable robot,” says Walke. “The main advance in this paper is working out what kind of architecture works the best for accommodating all these varying inputs and outputs.”

How to control diverse robots with the same AI model

The team used the same model architecture that powers large language model, known as a transformer. In many ways, the challenge the researchers were trying to solve is not dissimilar to that facing a chatbot, says Walke. In language modeling, the AI has to to pick out similar patterns in sentences with different lengths and word orders. Robot data can also be arranged in a sequence much like a written sentence, but depending on the particular embodiment, observations and actions vary in length and order too.

“Words might appear in different locations in a sentence, but they still mean the same thing,” says Walke. “In our task, an observation image might appear in different locations in the sequence, but it’s still fundamentally an image and we still want to treat it like an image.”

UC Berkeley/Carnegie Mellon University

Most machine learning approaches work through a sequence one element at a time, but transformers can process the entire stream of data at once. This allows them to analyze the relationship between different elements and makes them better at handling sequences that are not standardized, much like the diverse data found in large robotics datasets.

Walke and his colleagues aren’t the first to train transformers on large-scale robotics data. But previous approaches have either trained solely on data from robotic arms with broadly similar embodiments or manually converted input data to a common format to make it easier to process. In contrast, CrossFormer can process images from cameras positioned above a robot, at head height or on a robotic arms wrist, as well as joint position data from both quadrupeds and robotic arms, without any tweaks.

The result is a single control policy that can operate single robotic arms, pairs of robotic arms, quadrupeds, and wheeled robots on tasks as varied as picking and placing objects, cutting sushi, and obstacle avoidance. Crucially, it matched the performance of specialized models tailored for each robot and outperformed previous approaches trained on diverse robotic data. The team even tested whether the model could control an embodiment not included in the dataset—a small quadcopter. While they simplified things by making the drone fly at a fixed altitude, CrossFormer still outperformed the previous best method.

“That was definitely pretty cool,” says Ria Doshi, an undergraduate student at Berkeley. “I think that as we scale up our policy to be able to train on even larger sets of diverse data, it’ll become easier to see this kind of zero shot transfer onto robots that have been completely unseen in the training.”

The limitations of one AI model for all robots

The team admits there’s still work to do, however. The model is too big for any of the robots’ embedded chips and instead has to be run from a server. Even then, processing times are only just fast enough to support real-time operation, and Walke admits that could break down if they scale up the model. “When you pack so much data into a model it has to be very big and that means running it for real-time control becomes difficult.”

One potential workaround would be to use an approach called distillation, says Oier Mees, a postdoctoral research at Berkley and part of the CrossFormer team. This essentially involves training a smaller model to mimic the larger model, and if successful can result in similar performance for a much smaller computational budget.

But of more importance than the computing resource problem is that the team failed to see any positive transfer in their experiments, as CrossFormer simply matched previous performance rather than exceeding it. Walke thinks progress in computer vision and natural language processing suggests that training on more data could be the key.

Others say it might not be that simple. Jeannette Bohg, a professor of robotics at Stanford University, says the ability to train on such a diverse dataset is a significant contribution. But she wonders whether part of the reason why the researchers didn’t see positive transfer is their insistence on not aligning the input data. Previous research that trained on robots with similar observation and action data has shown evidence of such cross-overs. “By getting rid of this alignment, they may have also gotten rid of this significant positive transfer that we’ve seen in other work,” Bohg says.

It’s also not clear if the approach will boost performance on tasks specific to particular embodiments or robotic applications, says Ram Ramamoorthy, a robotics professor at Edinburgh University. The work is a promising step towards helping robots capture concepts common to most robots, like “avoid this obstacle,” he says. But it may be less useful for tackling control problems specific to a particular robot, such as how to knead dough or navigate a forest, which are often the hardest to solve.

The company behind Pornhub and other popular pornographic sites broke Canadian privacy law by allowing intimate images to be shared on its websites without the direct knowledge or consent of everyone depicted, the federal privacy commissioner has ruled. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s (OPC) investigation into Aylo (formerly MindGeek), one of the world’s largest […]

Israel has proposed a revised system of food business licensing to ease the regulatory burden on industry and improve sanitary conditions. The Ministry of Health said the current regulation, regarding business licensing in general and food businesses in particular, is outdated and places a heavy regulatory burden on companies. This... Continue Reading

Two astronauts relinquished their seats on a four-person spacecraft so that their colleagues could return to Earth from the ISS, where they’ve been stuck since June.