Effects of dietary amino acid balance on the response of dairy cows to an increase of milking frequency from twice to three times daily

An experiment was conducted to examine how the response of dairy cows to a change from twice to three times-daily milking is affected by deficiencies in the dietary supplies of three amino acids, His, Met, and Lys. Six cows were used in a 6 x 6 Latin square with 14-d periods. The three dietary treatments were: grass silage and a cereal-based supplement containing feather meal as the sole protein supplement; the same silage-cereal diet supplying similar amounts of metabolizable and rumen-undegradable protein but with additional amounts of His, Met, and Lys in the form of fish meal; and the fish meal diet with additional metabolizable energy in the form of an additional 2 kg/d of sugar beet pulp. Within each of these dietary treatments, the cows were milked twice and three times daily, making a total of six treatments. When cows were given the feather meal diet, even though dietary metabolizable energy was in considerable excess, a deficiency of specific amino acids prevented any increase in milk yield in response to increasing the frequency of milking from twice to three times daily. In contrast, when cows consumed a similar level of excess metabolizable energy and a similar level of rumen-undegradable protein for which the protein was of better amino acid balance (fish meal), the increased frequency of milking led to increased yield of milk and milk protein.     

A 3D implicit unstructured-grid finite volume method for structural dynamics

In this work, a new vertex-based finite volume method (FVM) using unstructured grids and cell-based data structure is proposed for computational analysis of two-and three-dimensional (2D/3D) general structural dynamic problems. The governing equations are spatially discretized by the FVM and an implicit dual time stepping scheme is employed to integrate the equations in time. The proposed method is applied to calculate deformations and dynamics of 2D and 3D cantilevers, as well as simply supported and clamped square plates. Computational results obtained are found to agree well with analytical solutions. It can be a viable alternative to the traditional finite element method (FEM) for structural dynamic calculations. And it can be seamlessly integrated into FVM-based Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) solver for simulating fluid-structure interaction (FSI).     

Fully integrated CMOS limiting amplifier with offset compensation network

A fully integrated CMOS limiting amplifier (LA) is presented. Its novel implementation of the offset compensation circuit completely removes bulky off-chip RC components. The LA is designed using a 0.18 mum CMOS technology and it obtains a 40 dB gain with a bandwidth of 1.8 GHz. The total power consumption is only 18.39 mW under a 1.8 V voltage supply.     

Work Function Tunability of Refractory Metal Nitrides by Lanthanum or Aluminum Doping for Advanced CMOS Devices

A lanthanum (La)-doped HfN is investigated as an n-type metal gate electrode on SiO₂ with tunable work function. The variation of La concentration in (HfinfinLa_1-x)N_y modulates the gate work function from 4.6 to 3.9 eV and remains stable after high-temperature annealing (900degC to 1000degC), which makes it suitable for n-channel MOSFET application. An ultrathin high-fc dielectric layer was formed at the metal/SiO₂ interface due to the (HfinfinLa_1-x)N_y and SiO₂ interaction during annealing. This causes a slight reduction in the effective oxide thickness and improves the tunneling current of the gate dielectric by two to three orders. We also report the tunability of TaN with Al doping, which is suitable for a p-type metal gate work function. Based on our results, several dual-gate integration processes by incorporating lanthanum or aluminum into a refractory metal nitride for CMOS technology are proposed.     

Strained n-Channel Transistors With Silicon Source and Drain Regions and Embedded Silicon/Germanium as Strain-Transfer Structure

We report the demonstration of 55 nm gate length strained n-channel field-effect transistors (n-FETs) having an embedded Si_1-xGe_x structure that is beneath the Si channel region and which acts as a strain-transfer structure (STS). The Si_1-xGe_x STS has lattice interactions with both the silicon source and drain regions and with the overlying Si channel region. This effectively results in a transfer of lateral tensile strain to the Si channel region for electron mobility enhancement. The mechanism of strain transfer is explained. Significant drive current I_on enhancement of 18% at a fixed off-state leakage I_off of 100 nA/mum is achieved, which is attributed to the strain-induced mobility enhancement. Furthermore, continuous downsizing of transistors leads to higher I_on enhancement in the strained n-FETs, which is consistent with the increasing transconductance G_m improvement when the gate length is reduced.     

Effectiveness of Explicit Stations Grouping in Crowded Wireless LANs

In this letter, we evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-stage contention scheme for wireless local area networks (WLANs) medium access control (MAC). Multi-stage contention schemes basically divide the stations into smaller groups to resolve the contention more efficiently. Previous researchers have proposed virtual grouping schemes for WLANs MAC. Here we quantitatively analyze what can be achieved with a simple grouping scheme, i.e. through multi-stage contention. Our analysis shows that the multi-stage scheme is efficient in resolving contention, making it a good alternative to the commonly used exponential backoff mechanism.     

Highly Flexible Graphene Oxide Nanosuspension Liquid‐Based Microfluidic Tactile Sensor

A novel graphene oxide (GO) nanosuspension liquid‐based microfluidic tactile sensor is developed. It comprises a UV ozone‐bonded Ecoflex–polydimethylsiloxane microfluidic assembly filled with GO nanosuspension, which serves as the working fluid of the tactile sensor. This device is highly flexible and able to withstand numerous modes of deformation as well as distinguish various user‐applied mechanical forces it is subjected to, including pressing, stretching, and bending. This tactile sensor is also highly deformable and wearable, and capable of recognizing and differentiating distinct hand muscle‐induced motions, such as finger flexing and fist clenching. Moreover, subtle differences in the handgrip strength derived from the first clenching gesture can be identified based on the electrical response of our device. This work highlights the potential application of the GO nanosuspension liquid‐based flexible microfluidic tactile sensing platform as a wearable diagnostic and prognostic device for real‐time health monitoring. Also importantly, this work can further facilitate the exploration and potential realization of a functional liquid‐state device technology with superior mechanical flexibility and conformability.     

Bridging the semantic gap in multimedia emotion/mood recognition for ubiquitous computing environment

With the advent of the ubiquitous era, multimedia emotion/mood could be used as an important clue in multimedia understanding, retrieval, recommendation, and some other multimedia applications. Many issues for multimedia emotion recognition have been addressed by different disciplines such as physiology, psychology, cognitive science, and musicology. Recently, many researchers have tried to uncover the relationship between multimedia contents such as image or music and emotion in many applications. In this paper, we introduce the existing emotion models and acoustic features. We also present a comparison of different emotion/mood recognition methods.