Recovering Internet service sessions from operating system failures

Current Internet service architectures lack support for salvaging stateful client sessions when the underlying operating system fails due to hangs, crashes, deadlocks, or panics. The backdoors (BD) system is designed to detect such failures and recover service sessions in clusters of Internet servers by extracting lightweight state associated with client service sessions from server memory. The BD architecture combines hardware and software mechanisms to enable accurate monitoring and remote healing actions, even in the presence of failures that render a system unavailable.     

Correlation between the severities of the ASTM E119 and ISO 834 fire exposures

The temperature rise in a castable refractory brick specimen of well-defined thermal properties was used to develop a correlation between the severities of the ASTM E119 and the ISO 834 fire tests. It was found that the ISO fire test is slightly less severe than the ASTM test, but the gain in fire endurance on account of conducting the test according to the ISO standard is usualy five minutes or less.     

A sensitive enzyme-based colorimetric assay for choline-containing phospholipids

An enzyme-based colorimetric assay for choline-containing phospholipids is described. When tested with egg yolk and serum, the method proved very sensitive, correlated well with other methods and avoided turbidity problems. The method is potentially applicable to a wide variety of samples.     

Single straight-tube Coriolis mass flowmeter

The single straight-tube Coriolis mass flowmeter is modelled using the theory of vibrating beams, taking into account the effects of the added masses of the electromagnetic drive and detectors. Many experiments are conducted to assess the performance of an experimental flowmeter. Additionally, the influences of fluid temperature and external vibrations on the sensitivity of the flowmeter are identified.     

Motor coactivation revealed by response force in divided and focused attention.

Four experiments examined effects of bimodal stimulation on response force (RF) in addition to reaction time (RT). In a divided-attention task (Exps 1–3), Ss were asked for a speeded response to either a visual or an auditory signal. In unimodal signal trials, either a visual or auditory signal was presented alone, and in redundant-signals trials, both signals were presented simultaneously. The same stimulus arrangement was used in a focused-attention task (Exp 4), but Ss had to withhold their response when an auditory signal was presented alone. In all experiments, the fastest RTs were attained in redundant-signals trials. In addition, RF was largest in redundant-signals trials, especially in the divided-attention task, suggesting a motor coactivation hypothesis. The results indicate that the type of stimulation influences not only when a response is initiated but also how the response is executed. This finding challenges the view, commonly held in mental chronometry, that late motoric processes remain untouched by experimental manipulations. A detailed analysis of the relationship between RT and RF revealed that these variables are not inherently redundant measures, and therefore, RF recording may supplement the traditional RT measurement in mental chronometry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Small-signal design theory and experiment for the punch-through injection transit-time oscillator

The small-signal theory of the punch-through ‘barrier-injection and transit-time’ (BARITT) diode is given and the physical mechanisms of device operation are described. Both velocity modulation and charge density modulation components of current are included and the effects of carrier diffusion in the source regions of the device are taken into account by using an equivalent small-signal conductivity for the potential barrier which controls charge injection. It is shown how carrier bunching in the source regions creates space-charge waves which propagate through the source-drain space and generate power as the associated component of current moves into anti-phase with the local electric field.Theoretical curves are presented for a typical PNP silicon device and agree well with experimental measurements of series resistance and series capacitance. A device of area 1·25 × 10^?8 m² (5 thou. diameter) and source to drain spacing of 5 μm made in $\text{5 Ω}\text{cm}$ material was found to possess negative resistance over the wide frequency range from about 5 GHz to about 12 GHz with a maximum value of about — $\text{5 Ω}$.     

Structural identification of highly polar nontarget contaminants in drinking water by ESI-FAIMS-Q-TOF-MS

Drinking water is a complex mixture that contains thousands of naturally occurring and anthropogenic contaminants. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods have gained a tremendous popularity in monitoring nonvolatile, highly polar, and thermally labile components in drinking water. It is well recognized, however, that there are difficulties or limitations of LC-MS methods associated with (1) significant resources (time and effort) involved in sample preparation (preconcentration, fractionation, separation), (2) low screening capacity for target contaminants, and (3) insufficient capabilities for structural identification (elucidation) of nontarget contaminants. Consequently, LC-MS methods are mainly used for the detection of target contaminants (compounds identified in drinking water before), seldom for the structural identification of abundant nontarget pollutants (unidentified pollutants in drinking water), and almost never for the structural identification of nontarget components at a trace level. The paper presents a new method of electrospray ionization high field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry mass spectrometry (ESI-FAIMS-MS), which can detect a large number of water pollutants in a quick and convenient fashion without preconcentration, fractionation, derivatization, or column separation. Most importantly, the method provides structural identification of nontarget contaminants including species present in drinking water at a sub-parts-per-billion concentration level. The identification of previously unknown contaminants was based on mass measurements of investigated ions and their fragments in mass and tandem mass spectrometry. Elemental compositions of these ions, determined by mass measurements, were used to link dissociation patterns of investigated species with their chemical structures. Characterization of nontarget contaminants of chlorine-treated drinking water by ESI-FAIMS-MS has revealed many previously unknown disinfection byproducts. The most intriguing compound, from a group of highly polar hydroxycarboxylic acids discovered in the study, was the most abundant component of drinking water, glycolic acid. Glycolic acid (toxic to kidneys and associated with a moderate maternal toxicity) has never been considered as a drinking water contaminant, despite the fact that it is present in drinking water at a higher concentration (high ppm) than concentrations of highly polar water pollutants that had attracted most attention in the past. The process of structural elucidation of discovered pollutants, including ultratrace contaminants representing a variety of carboxylic acids, will be presented in detail. The structural identification of highly polar contaminants in drinking water presented in the paper is rarely reported in the literature. The key experimental feature of the ESI-FAIMS-MS method is FAIMS separation, which significantly improves the identification capabilities of mass spectrometry.