A Novel Charge Recycling Design Scheme Based on Adiabatic Charge Pump

Power consumption has become a critical design criterion for integrated circuits given the growing importance of portable battery-operated devices. A typical CMOS gate driven by power supply (V_DD), draws energy equal to C_LV_DD ² during every cycle of operation. We propose a new approach to recycle the charge with an adiabatic charge pump that moves the slower adiabatic components away from the critical path of logic. The critical path of the system, and hence the delay, do not change. This is achieved by overlapping the adiabatic charge pump delays with the computing path logic delays. Many embedded high performance applications such as digital signal processing (DSP), which exhibit datapath parallelism, are ideal candidates for this scheme. The proposed method has been implemented in DSP computations. SPICE simulations-based results indicate that the proposed scheme reduces energy consumption in these DSP circuits by as much as 18% (on average 9.94%) with no perceptible loss in performance. The area penalty for these energy savings are in the 1%-2% range, The leakage energy reduction in 45-nm BPTM averages 46%.     

Couple-Focused Group Intervention for Women With Early Stage Breast Cancer.

This study examined the efficacy of a couple-focused group intervention on psychological adaptation of women with early stage breast cancer and evaluated whether perceived partner unsupportive behavior or patient functional impairment moderated intervention effects. Two hundred thirty-eight women were randomly assigned to receive either 6 sessions of a couple-focused group intervention or usual care. Intent-to-treat growth curve analyses indicated that participants assigned to the couples' group reported lower depressive symptoms. Women rating their partners as more unsupportive benefited more from the intervention than did women with less unsupportive partners, and women with more physical impairment benefited more from the intervention group than did women with less impairment. Subgroup analyses comparing women attending the couple-focused group intervention with women not attending groups and with usual care participants indicated that women attending sessions reported significantly less distress than did women receiving usual care and women who dropped out of the intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Spousal negative responses to cancer patients: The role of social restriction, spouse mood, and relationship satisfaction.

This cross-sectional study examined perceptions of spousal negative behaviors in 219 cancer patients. A mediational model was proposed to explain why a spouse might respond negatively to an ill partner because of greater restriction on activities as functional impairment increases. A moderating effect of the spouse's marital satisfaction assessed 3 months before other study measures was also proposed. Results provided support for the proposed model. The relationship between increasing patient functional impairment and spousal negative behaviors was mediated by greater restriction in spouse activities, as well as spousal negative mood. A marginally significant moderating effect for marital satisfaction was found. Although these results must be replicated with a prospective study, the findings begin to shed light on why spouses might respond in negative ways to an ill partner. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intrusive thoughts and psychological distress among cancer patients: The role of spouse avoidance and criticism.

This study examined whether perceived spouse criticism and avoidance impacted cognitive processing in 129 cancer patients. It was hypothesized that intrusive thoughts would be associated with an increase in psychological distress among patients who felt their spouses were critical or avoiding them and that intrusive thoughts would not be positively associated with distress among patients who did not feel their spouses were critical or avoidant. The impact of spouse criticism was predicted to be stronger than the impact of spouse avoidance. A moderating effect for spouse criticism on the association between early intrusive thoughts and later distress was present. Spouse avoidance did not have a significant moderating effect on the relation between intrusive thoughts and later distress. Results suggest spouse criticism and avoidance may have differential effects on the cognitive processing of cancer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Global scenarios for carbon dioxide emissions

The status of global greenhouse-gas emissions is summarized as of December 1992.