A comparative performance study of common and popular task‐centric programming frameworks

Programmers today face a bewildering array of parallel programming models and tools, making it difficult to choose an appropriate one for each application. An increasingly popular programming model supporting structured parallel programming patterns in a portable and composable manner is the task‐centric programming model. In this study, we compare several popular task‐centric programming frameworks, including Cilk Plus, Threading Building Blocks, and various implementations of OpenMP 3.0. We have analyzed their performance on the Barcelona OpenMP Tasking Suite benchmark suite both on a 48‐core AMD Opteron 6172 server and a 64‐core TILEPro64 embedded many‐core processor. Our results show that the OpenMP offers the highest flexibility for programmers, and this flexibility comes to a cost. Frameworks supporting only a specific and more restrictive model, such as Cilk Plus and Threading Building Blocks, are generally more efficient both in terms of performance and energy consumption. However, Intel's implementation of OpenMP tasks performs the best and closest to the specialized run‐time systems. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New low band gap alternating polyfluorene copolymer-based photovoltaic cells

New low band gap alternating polyfluorene copolymers were synthesized for use in plastic solar cells and their optical, electrochemical, and photovoltaic characteristics were determined. These polymers incorporated fluorene units alternating with groups including electron-withdrawing (A) and electron-donating (D) groups in donor–acceptor–donor (DAD) sequence to achieve the lowering of band gaps. The HOMO–LUMO values were estimated from electrochemical studies. By varying the donor and acceptor strength and position of the solubilizing substituents, similar HOMO values were obtained. These values were also found to correlate well with the open circuit voltage (V_OC) values determined from photovoltaic data of the polymers blended with the acceptor PCBM. Despite similar HOMO values, the absorption spectra of the polymers differ significantly. This prompted the preparation of photovoltaic devices consisting of blends of two polymers with complementary absorptions in combination with PCBM to harvest more photons in the polymer solar cells.     

Theoretical models and experimental results on the temperature dependence of polyfluorene solar cells

The temperature dependence of device parameters of polymer solar cells based on alternating copolyfluorene incorporating dioctyl-fluorene and di-thienyl-benzothiadiazole (APFO-3) mixed with [6,6]-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methylester (PCBM) was modeled theoretically by simulation and investigated experimentally under illumination of AM1.5 (100 mW/cm²). Both simulation and experimental results show photocurrent, fill factor and power conversion efficiency all increase, and the open-circuit voltages monotonically decrease with temperature increase from room temperature (RT) to 120 °C. These results can be explained by taking into account the temperature dependence of the mobility, and the thermal activation of the injection current from the electrodes. The increase of PCE with temperature is a distinguishing feature of polymer solar cells.     

Visualisation and quantification of lung content of radionuclides associated with nuclear and radiological emergencies

In a situation when radionuclides accidentally or deliberately are dispersed in the environment, there is a need for rapid investigation of the internal contamination in exposed individuals. In this work, the possibilities of visualising and quantifying uptakes of different radionuclides in the lung region of an adult individual using gamma camera systems have been examined, mainly on a two-headed stationary clinical gamma camera. An anthropomorphic phantom was used to mimic acute lung uptakes in three different body sizes. The gamma camera was calibrated with the lung inserts filled with a homogeneous solution of ??Tc(m), ??Sc and 32P, or with point sources of 2?1Am, ??Co, ??Sr, 13?Cs and ??Sr/??Y. It was found that for the stationary gamma camera the minimum detectable activity in the lungs using a 5-min acquisition time ranged from 0.53 kBq for ??Sc to 50 kBq for 32P. Furthermore, the point sources of 13?Cs, ??Co and ??Sr/??Y (0.16, 0.80 and 2.2 MBq, respectively) located in the lung insert of the phantom, could be clearly visualised, exhibiting distinct intensity maxima. It is thus concluded that gamma camera systems can be useful for rapid assessment of acute intakes of radionuclides associated with emergency preparedness, both in terms of localisation and quantification.     

Shrunken Pore Syndrome Is Frequently Occurring in Severe COVID-19

A selective decrease in the renal filtration of larger molecules is attributed to the shrinkage of glomerular pores, a condition termed Shrunken Pore Syndrome (SPS). SPS is associated with poor long-term prognosis. We studied SPS as a risk marker in a cohort of patients with COVID-19 treated in an intensive care unit. SPS was defined as a ratio < 0.7 when the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), determined by cystatin C, calculated by the Cystatin C Caucasian-Asian-Pediatric-Adult equation (CAPA), was divided by the eGFR determined by creatinine, calculated by the revised Lund–Malmö creatinine equation (LMR). Clinical data were prospectively collected. In total, SPS was present in 86 (24%) of 352 patients with COVID-19 on ICU admission. Patients with SPS had a higher BMI, Simplified Physiology Score (SAPS3), and had diabetes and/or hypertension more frequently than patients without SPS. Ninety-nine patients in the total cohort were women, 50 of whom had SPS. In dexamethasone-naïve patients, C-reactive protein (CRP ), TNF-alpha, and interleukin-6 did not differ between SPS and non-SPS patients. Demographic factors (gender, BMI) and illness severity (SAPS3) were independent predictors of SPS. Age and dexamethasone treatment did not affect the frequency of SPS after adjustments for age, sex, BMI, and acute severity. SPS is frequent in severely ill COVID-19 patients. Female gender was associated with a higher proportion of SPS. Demographic factors and illness severity were independent predictors of SPS.     

Radiation induced dissolution of UO2 based nuclear fuel – A critical review of predictive modelling approaches

Radiation induced dissolution of uranium dioxide (UO₂) nuclear fuel and the consequent release of radionuclides to intruding groundwater are key-processes in the safety analysis of future deep geological repositories for spent nuclear fuel. For several decades, these processes have been studied experimentally using both spent fuel and various types of simulated spent fuels. The latter have been employed since it is difficult to draw mechanistic conclusions from real spent nuclear fuel experiments. Several predictive modelling approaches have been developed over the last two decades. These models are largely based on experimental observations. In this work we have performed a critical review of the modelling approaches developed based on the large body of chemical and electrochemical experimental data. The main conclusions are: (1) the use of measured interfacial rate constants give results in generally good agreement with experimental results compared to simulations where homogeneous rate constants are used; (2) the use of spatial dose rate distributions is particularly important when simulating the behaviour over short time periods; and (3) the steady-state approach (the rate of oxidant consumption is equal to the rate of oxidant production) provides a simple but fairly accurate alternative, but errors in the reaction mechanism and in the kinetic parameters used may not be revealed by simple benchmarking. It is essential to use experimentally determined rate constants and verified reaction mechanisms, irrespective of whether the approach is chemical or electrochemical.     

Industrial energy efficiency: the need for investment decision support from a manager perspective

Global competition, commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and a deregulated, integrated European electricity market will in all probability increase the demand for energy efficiency on the part of companies in Sweden. Investment decisions are an important part of meeting the new demands, because they decide the future efficiency of industrial energy systems. The objective of this study is to investigate, from a managerial perspective, the need to improve decision support in some industries, which can help to facilitate and improve investment decisions concerning energy efficiency. This work has been conducted through in-depth interviews with representatives for a number of energy-intensive companies and non-energy-intensive companies from different sectors. One need that was identified was the improvement of working methods in order to support the decision-making process. Here, external players seem to be playing an increasingly important role. Access to correct information, better follow-up activities, and transparent, understandable calculations are also considered to be important. The study will form the foundation for subsequent work on decision support and energy efficiency in industry.