LEKIDs Developments for mm-Wave Astronomy

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) have recently drawn the attention of the low-temperature detectors community. Easy fabrication, high sensitivity, small time constants and most notably the intrinsic capability to frequency multiplexing open new possibilities to applications that need very large array sizes and/or high speed read-out. Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance Detectors (LEKIDs) designed and fabricated in our collaboration have already shown good on sky performances, but new developments are needed for future multi-thousands-pixels instruments. In this contribution we present such ongoing developments: a new LEKIDs design, optimized to be dual polarization sensitive; use of new materials such as TiN in order to reach better signal to noise ratios; new solutions to minimize the cross-talk between pixels in order to achieve a better control of the resonance positions in frequency space. We discuss present lab measurements of the optical performances and recent improvements of the read-out electronics.     

Study of Lewis acid catalyzed chemical bromination and bromoalkylation of multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Chemical functionalization of carbon nanotubes (CNT) with nucleophiles requires introduction of electrophilic reactive sites on the CNTs. This can, for instance, be accomplished by the chemical bromination procedure with elemental bromine and a set of Lewis acids (BBr₃, BF₃ × Et₂O, AlBr₃, FeBr₃, ZnBr₂, TiBr₄, SiBr₄, SnBr₄, VBr₃) or a radical starter like dibenzoylperoxide (DBPO) in appropriate solvents at varied temperature. The present approach to electrophilic sites relies on the well-known electrophilic aromatic substitution or addition of bromine with aromatic structural units. In addition to the use of bromine, the introduction of haloalkyl groups was also investigated here using bis-electrophiles or haloalcohols and Brønsted acids. The advantages and drawbacks of the studied reaction conditions, the obtained degree of bromination as analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and the amount of introduced bromine that can be substituted by a nucleophile are presented and discussed.     

GMOfinder—A GMO Screening Database

The development and cultivation of genetically modified crops is still increasing globally. Food and feed imports from outside the European Union (EU) will subsequently require more effort from the responsible authorities in monitoring the compliance with effective labelling regulations. The aim of this study was the development of the GMOfinder, a database for collection and interpretation of information related to the screening for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Different genetic elements (e.g. promoters, terminators, structural genes) are artificially introduced into plants to establish new genetic modifications. The introduced elements may vary between GMO events, depending on the intended trait(s). Screening for such inserted elements with (real-time) polymerase chain reaction is a common first step to analyse samples for the presence of any genetical modification. From the pattern of detectable and nondetectable elements, valuable conclusions about the identity of putative present GMO event(s) can be drawn with the GMOfinder. Information about selected genetic elements from the literature, applications for authorisation and other (web) sources were systematically integrated in a tabular matrix format. Special care was taken to additionally record the sources of the information, thus facilitating evaluation of screening results, and tracing of possible errors in the matrix. The GMOfinder accesses data from the element matrix with implemented algorithms and facilitates to interpret the outcome of screenings. Such a preselection helps to systematically narrow down the candidates for subsequent identification reactions. Optional display of events with potentially masked elements completes the included features.     

Relative contributions of nearshore and wetland habitats to coastal food webs in the Great Lakes

Hydrologic linkages among coastal wetland and nearshore areas allow coastal fish to move among the habitats, which has led to a variety of habitat use patterns. We determined nutritional support of coastal fishes from 12 wetland-nearshore habitat pairs using stable isotope analyses, which revealed differences among species and systems in multi-habitat use. Substantial (proportions?>?0.30) nutrition often came from the habitat other than that in which fish were captured. Nearshore subsidies to coastal wetlands indicate wetlands are not exclusively exporters of energy and materials; rather, there is reciprocity in the mutual energetic support of nearshore and wetland food webs. Coastal wetland hydrogeomorphology influenced the amount of multi-habitat use by coastal fishes. Fishes from systems with relatively open interfaces between wetland and nearshore habitats exhibited less nutritional reliance on the habitat in which they were captured, and higher use of resources from the adjacent habitat. Comparisons of stable isotope analyses of nutrition with otolith analyses of occupancy indicated nutritional sources often corresponded with habitat occupancy; however, disparities among place of capture, otolith analyses, and nutritional analyses indicated differences in the types of support those analyses inform. Disparities between occupancy information and nutritional information can stem from movements for support functions other than foraging. Together, occupancy information from otolith microchemistry and nutritional information from stable isotope analyses provide complementary measures of the use of multiple habitats by mobile consumers. This work underscores the importance of protecting or restoring a diversity of coastal habitats and the hydrologic linkages among them.     

Through Process Modelling of Surface Densified PM Gears

Through process modelling of surface densified gears produced by powder metallurgy (PM) was established by coupling the modelling of the manufacturing processes surface densification, carburization, and heat treatment. The complete model allows the prediction of the local microstructure and hardness in the gear as well as the appearance and direction of residual stresses in the final part. The structural integrity of the part is governed, on the one hand, by the local material properties and residual stresses and, on the other hand, by the load stresses calculated for typical operating conditions. A simplified hardness dependent Haigh diagram was used to calculate the maximum allowable cyclic stresses for the gear tooth and to derive a local utilization ratio as target entity for optimization of the individual steps of the production chain.     

Information quality,user satisfaction,and the manifestation of workarounds: a qualitative and quantitative study of enterprise content management system users

In this paper, we focus on a critical aspect of work in organizations: using information in work tasks which is provided by information systems (IS) such as enterprise content management (ECM) systems. Our study based on the IS success model, 34 interviews, and an empirical study of 247 ECM system users at a financial service provider indicates that it is appropriate to differentiate between contextual and representational information quality as two information quality dimensions. Furthermore, we reveal that in addition to system quality, the two information quality dimensions are important in determining end-user satisfaction, which in turn influences the manifestation of workarounds. Our study also finds that employees using workarounds to avoid an ECM system implemented several years is negatively related to individual net benefits of the ECM system. Hence, we conclude that when investigating large-scale IS such as ECM systems, it is important to differentiate among information quality dimensions to more deeply understand end-user satisfaction and the resulting manifestation of workarounds. Moreover, this research guides organizations in implementing the most appropriate countermeasures based on the importance of either contextual or representational information quality.     

Climate Change and Future Long-Term Trends of Rainfall at North-East of Iraq

Iraq is facing water shortage problem despite the presence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In this research, long rainfall trends up to the year 2099 were studied in Sulaimani city northeast Iraq to give an idea about future prospects. The medium high （A2） and medium low B2 scenarios have been used for purpose of this study as they are more likely than others scenarios, that beside the fact that no climate modeling canter has performed GCM （global climate model） simulations for more than a few emissions scenarios （HadCM3 has only these two scenarios） otherwise pattern scaling can be used for generating different scenarios which entail a huge uncertainty. The results indicate that the average annual rainfall shows a significant downward trend for both A2 and B2 scenarios. In addition, winter projects increase/decrease in the daily rainfall statistics of wet days, the spring season show very slight drop and no change for both scenarios. However, both summer and autumn shows a significant reduction in maximum rainfall value especially in 2080s while the other statistics remain nearly the same. The extremes events are to decrease slightly in 2080s with highest decrease associated with A2 scenario. This is due to the fact that rainfall under scenario A2 is more significant than under scenario B2. The return period of a certain rainfall will increase in the future when a present storm of 20 year could occur once every 43 year in the 2080s. An increase in the frequency of extreme rainfall depends on several factors such as the return period, season of the year, the period considered as well as the emission scenario used.