The integrated academic information management system at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

Over the past seven years, Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center has been planning and implementing an integrated academic information management system. Accomplishments to date include establishing an institutional information architecture, installing a campus-wide network of workstations, recruiting the staff needed to develop and implement the system, and developing various applications. This paper presents the rationale and steps involved in these accomplishments, as well as data on use of the system so far.     

An analytical expression for the power coefficient of an ideal horizontal-axis wind turbine

The paper shows that an analytical evaluation of the power coefficient C_p for an ideal horizontal-axis wind turbine can be made via an expression giving the direct relationship of C_p and the axial induction factor a. The results obtained agree closely with those obtained numerically from the usual integral expression involving several variables.     

Polyamide-6,6/in situ silica hybrid nanocomposites by sol-gel technique: synthesis, characterization and properties

The organic-inorganic hybrid nanocomposites comprising of poly(iminohexamethyleneiminoadipoyl), better known as Polyamide-6,6 (abbreviated henceforth as PA66), and silica (SiO₂) were synthesized through sol-gel technique at ambient temperature. The inorganic phase was generated in situ by hydrolysis-condensation of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS) in different concentrations, under acid catalysis, in presence of the organic phase, PA66, dissolved in formic acid. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy was used to monitor the microstructural evolution of the silica phase in the PA66 matrix. Wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) studies showed that the crystallinity in PA66 phase decreased with increasing silica content. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) of the nanocomposite films revealed the dispersion of SiO₂ particle with dimensions of <100 nm in the form of network as well as linear structure. X-ray silicon mapping further confirmed the homogeneous dispersion of the silica phase in the bulk of the organic phase. The melting peak temperatures slightly decreased compared to neat PA66, while an improvement in thermal stability by about 20 °C was achieved with hybrid nanocomposite films, as indicated by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) exhibited significant improvement in storage modulus (E′) for the hybrid nanocomposites over the control specimen. An increase in Young's modulus and tensile strength of the hybrid films was also observed with an increase in silica content, indicating significant reinforcement of the matrix in the presence of nanoparticles. Some properties of the in situ prepared PA66-silica nanocomposites were compared with those of conventional composites prepared using precipitated silica as the filler by solution casting from formic acid.     

Triglyceride composition of chrysalis oil,an insect lipid

Chrysalis oil, an insect fat obtained from the spent silk worm pupae, Bombyx mori, is a by-product of sericultural industry and represents a potential source of 1750 tons of linolenic-rich oil per annum for India. Fatty acid and triglyceride compositions of chrysalis oil have been determined by the combination of the techniques of lower temperature segregation, lipolysis, thin layer and gas liquid chromatography. Percentage contents of the component acids are: C_14:0, 0.6; C_16:0, 19.3; C_18:0 3.9; C_18:1, 17.7; C_18:2, 9.8, and C_18:3, 48.7. Major component triglycerides are, LLnLn, 5.2%; PLnO, 6.4%;OLnLn, 9.6%; LnLnLn, 10.5% and PLnLn, 14.0% (P, palmitic; O, oleic; L, linoleic and Ln, linolenic acids. On low temperature crystallization, Chrysalis oil yielded two fractions amounting together to 40% of the total with composition quite similar to that of linseed oil.     

Rapid design space exploration by hybrid fuzzy search approach for optimal architecture determination of multi objective computing systems

Design Space Exploration (DSE) with multi-parametric objective in High Level Synthesis (HLS) involves assessing the various design points in the architecture design space to find the optimum solution for the design according to the system requirements specified. Due to the time to market pressure, the cost of solving the problem of architecture selection by exhaustive analysis is strictly forbidden. The tradeoffs linked to the selection of the appropriate design point during architecture evaluation needs careful assessment for efficient design space exploration. Further DSE requires satisfying multiple conflicting multi objective conditions such as increase in accuracy of evaluation during DSE with simultaneous speedup in the exploration process. This paper presents a novel hybrid design space exploration approach which is a combination of the Priority Factor (PF) method and Fuzzy search technique that is rapid and accurate in architecture evaluation and selection. The proposed approach for DSE when applied on a number of benchmarks yielded superior results compared to the current existing DSE approach for architecture selection. The comparison results of the proposed hybrid approach with the current existing approach for different benchmarks are shown and the speedups obtained are also presented.     

Triglyceride composition of Buchanania lanzan seed oil

The fatty acid composition of Buchanania lanzan seed oil, determined by urea complex formation and gas liquid chromatography (g.l.c), was found to be: myristic, 0.6; palmitic, 33.4; stearic, 6.3; oleic, 53.7; and linoleic, 6.0%. Triglyceride compositions of the native seed oil and its randomised product were calculated from the fatty acid compositions of the triglycerides and of the corresponding 2-monoglycerides produced by pancreatic lipase hydrolysis. The oil is composed of 3.2, 35.8, 45.5 and 15.5% trisaturated, monounsaturated disaturated, diunsaturated monosaturated and triunsaturated glycerides respectively. The special characteristic of the B. lanzan seed oil is its content of 22.7, 31.0 and 11.3% dipalmitoolein, dioleopalmitin and triolein respectively. The percent GS₃ content in the oil increased from 3.2 to 7.5 by the process of randomisation. On directed interesterification the oil yielded a product with a slip point of 41.5°C which may be suitable as a coating material for delayed action tablets. The oil also appears to be a promising one as a commercial source of palmitic and oleic acids.     

Estimation of power density in IMPATT using different materials

ABSTRACT

The RF output power dissipated per unit area is calculated using Runge-Kutta method for the high-moderate-moderate-high (n⁺-n-p-p⁺) doping profile of double drift region (DDR)-based impact avalanche transit time (IMPATT) diode by taking different substrate at Ka band. Those substrates are silicon, gallium arsenide, germanium, wurtzite gallium nitride, indium phosphide and 4H-silicon carbide. A comparative study regarding power dissipation ability by the IMPATT using different material is being presented thereby modelling the DDR IMPATT diode in a one-dimensional structure. The IMPATT based on 4H-SiC element has highest power density in the order of 10¹⁰ Wm^?2 and the Si-based counterpart has lowest power density of order 10⁶ Wm^?2 throughout the Ka band. So, 4H-SiC-based IMPATT should be preferable over others for the power density preference based application. This result will be helpful to estimate the power density of the IMPATT for any doping profile and to select the proper element for the optimum design of the IMPATT as far as power density is concerned in the Ka band. Also, we have focused on variation of power density with different junction temperatures and modelled the heat sink with analysis of thermal resistances.     

Reliability bounds and other inequalities for discrete life distributions

In this paper we give sharp bounds on the reliability of discrete IFR, IFRA, NBU, DFR, DFRA and NWU classes, based on one known moment. Subsequently the discrete analogues of several continuous-time results related to maintained systems are also presented.     

Algorithms for Dynamic Routing in All-Optical Networks

In this paper, we have studied a number of algorithms for routing in all-optical wavelength routed networks. We have considered situations where a lightpath is dynamically created in response to a request for communication and the WDM channels constituting the lightpath are reclaimed when the communication is over. We have looked at two schemes for dynamic wavelength allocation. In the first scheme we have assumed the existence of a central agent to maintain a database of existing lightpaths where the central agent attempts to generate a new lightpath in response to a request for communication. In the second scheme, we attempt to generate a new lightpath using a distributed algorithm. In the first scheme we have exploited the existence of multiple paths between any pair of nodes in a network in order to reduce the blocking probability. For the second scheme, we have proposed three distributed strategies to determine, if possible, a lightpath when there is a request for communication. Each of these strategies have their advantages and disadvantages in terms of the expected blocking probability and the set-up time. We have studied the performances of both the schemes using Monte Carlo simulation.     

An algorithm for optimal assignment of a wavelength in a tree topology and its application in WDM networks

In this paper, we present a polynomial time algorithm that gives an optimal solution to the routing and wavelength assignment (RWA) problem in a tree topology. One of the major design issues in wavelength-division multiplexed networks is the assignment of the limited number of wavelengths among network stations so that greater capacity can be achieved. The problem of RWA is known to be NP-hard problem. Many researchers have tackled the problem of RWA with a number of efficient heuristic algorithms. This paper presents an algorithm that optimally assigns a single wavelength to maximize one-hop traffic in a tree topology. The algorithm uses dynamic programming and is shown to be optimal with a time complexity of O(N/sup 4/). We also propose a heuristic scheme to use our optimal algorithm for wavelength assignment in a general graph. The heuristic works on the tree subgraphs of a given graph and the remaining spare wavelengths can be assigned with an existing RWA policy.