Low-temperature CV dispersion in MOS devices

A study is reported of the dispersion seen in the accumulation and depletion regions, of the C-V curve in n-channel MOS devices in the temperature range 30-45 K. It is concluded that the dispersion observed in these experiments is caused by time-constant effects, due to the substrate resistance and not caused by dopant atom emission time constant effects. From the measured admittance as a function of temperature and frequency, the acceptor energy level is determined to within ±0.4 meV     

Carriers for precipitating nucleic acids

One hundred and forty nine patients underwent thyroid and parathyroid surgery over a nine year period. The most common indications for surgery were the presence of a solitary thyroid nodule (56%) or the onset of pressure symptoms (30%). Carcinoma was found in 7.4% of cases. Wound complications occurred in 5%. The permanent nerve injury rate was 0.67%. The incidence of permanent hypothyroidism after surgery was 4%. No patients developed permanent hypoparathyroidism.     

Evaluation of hot hardness and creep of a 350 grade commercial maraging steel

The hardening response and the indentation creep of a 350 grade commercial maraging steel were evaluated using a hot hardness tester. The hardness versus temperature plot exhibited three distinct regions. Hardness response was noted between 500–800 K. The unusually high values of activation energy and stress exponent obtained during the creep experiment could be rationalized by a novel concept of introducing a back stress term in the indentation creep relation. The corrected value of the activation energy was found to be reasonably in agreement with the activation energy for diffusion of Ni in iron. Results are supplemented with microstructural observation.     

Disorder in cellulosic fibers

Ruland's concept of an isotropic disorder function is applied to estimate the disorder parameter and the degree of crystallinity in a few cellulosic fibers: two cottons, native ramie, and a high-tenacity rayon. The results indicate an increase in disorder without any change in crystallinity on mercerization of native celluloses. On hydrolysis, with or without a pretreatment of mercerization, the samples exhibit a higher crystallinity, disorder remaining the same as for native celluloses. A ball-milled sample of “amorphous” cellulose is still found to be fairly crystalline with the lowest disorder. On being wetted in water and oven-dried, a distorted form of cellulose II with higher crystallinity and disorder was obtained. The polynosic fiber, Tufcel, has low values for the degree of crystallinity, disorder parameter, as well as crystallite dimension. A strong dependence of the degree of crystallinity on the crystallite size, particularly the lateral, is observed.     

Parallelization of a dynamic SVD clustering algorithm and its application in information retrieval

We describe an implementation of a parallel document clustering scheme based on latent semantic indexing, which uses singular value decomposition. Given a set of documents, the clustering algorithm is dynamic in the sense that it automatically infers the number of clusters to be output. The parallel version has been implemented on a LAN and on a dual‐core system. Experimental evaluation of the algorithm shows an average speed‐up of 6.22 for the LAN implementation and an average speed‐up of 3.71 for the dual‐core implementation, while still maintaining a precision and recall in the range [0.85, 1]. To put these implementations in the context of information retrieval, we use the parallel clustering algorithm and develop a document similarity search system. The similarity search system shows good performance in terms of precision and recall. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CMOS scaling into the nanometer regime

Starting with a brief review on 0.1-μm (100 nm) CMOS status, this paper addresses the key challenges in further scaling of CMOS technology into the nanometer (sub-100 nm) regime in light of fundamental physical effects and practical considerations. Among the issues discussed are: lithography, power supply and threshold voltage, short-channel effect, gate oxide, high-field effects, dopant number fluctuations and interconnect delays. The last part of the paper discusses several alternative or unconventional device structures, including silicon-on-insulator (SOI), SiGe MOSFET's, low-temperature CMOS, and double-gate MOSFET's, which may lead to the outermost limits of silicon scaling     

Evolution of multiprotocol label switching

Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) is rapidly emerging as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard intended to enhance the speed, scalability, and service provisioning capabilities in the Internet. MPLS uses the technique of packet forwarding based on labels, to enable the implementation of a simpler high-performance packet forwarding engine. This also decouples packet forwarding from routing, facilitating the provision of varied routing services independent of the packet forwarding paradigm. The authors track the evolution of this technology in relation to other existing technologies. Then an overview of the MPLS architecture and design is provided. In addition, some of the work that was a precursor to MPLS is discussed, as well as related issues and debates     

The CEO problem [multiterminal source coding]

We consider a new problem in multiterminal source coding motivated by the following decentralized communication/estimation task. A firm's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is interested in the data sequence {X(t)} _t=1^∞ which cannot be observed directly, perhaps because it represents tactical decisions by a competing firm. The CEO deploys a team of L agents who observe independently corrupted versions of {X(t)}_t=1^∞. Because {X(t)} is only one among many pressing matters to which the CEO must attend, the combined data rate at which the agents may communicate information about their observations to the CEO is limited to, say, R bits per second. If the agents were permitted to confer and pool their data, then in the limit as L→∞ they usually would be able to smooth out their independent observation noises entirely. Then they could use their R bits per second to provide the CEO with a representation of {X(t)} with fidelity D(R), where D(·) is the distortion-rate function of {X(t)}. In particular, with such data pooling D can be made arbitrarily small if R exceeds the entropy rate H of {X(t)}. Suppose, however, that the agents are not permitted to convene, Agent i having to send data based solely on his own noisy observations {Y_i(t)}. We show that then there does not exist a finite value of R for which even infinitely many agents can make D arbitrarily small. Furthermore, in this isolated-agents case we determine the asymptotic behavior of the minimal error frequency in the limit as L and then R tend to infinity     

Dual-mode control of tri-state boost converter for improved performance

A tri-state boost converter with an additional boost-inductor free-wheeling interval was proposed earlier to eliminate the right-half-plane (RHP) zero that occurs in the control-to-output transfer function of a classical boost converter under continuous-conduction mode of operation. A "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme, in which the "capacitor-charging" interval of the converter was kept constant, was employed. This resulted in a relatively large inductor current, especially under high line and load conditions, thereby causing high circuit losses. This paper proposes two variations of a novel dual-mode control (DMC) scheme that vary both the "boost" and the "capacitor-charging" intervals. Control analysis, design, and limitations of the proposed DMC schemes are presented. Through computer simulations and hardware experiments the performance of the tri-state boost converter with DMC schemes are compared with those of the tri-state boost converter with "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme, and the classical PI-controlled boost converter. The DMC schemes achieve a significant (about 10%) improvement in converter's efficiency for a wide load range over the "constant-D/sub o/" control scheme.     

Centralized power control and routing policies for multihop wireless networks

This paper investigates joint power control and routing policies for general multihop wireless networks when all the transmitting nodes are subject to a long-term average power constraint. The main contribution of this paper is to propose online power and rate control algorithms and prove that these policies stabilize the entire queuing network whenever the packet arrival rates at each node are in the corresponding region of achievable rates. The online policies are time varying and based on the queue size at each node and the instantaneous channel conditions. The theoretical results are supported by simulations for the illustrative cases of both a multiple-access channel and a relay channel.