Spatial and temporal patterns of herd somatic cell score in france

Spatial and temporal patterns of annual milk somatic cell score (ASCS) were explored in French dairy herds between 1996 and 2000 to detect regional singularities for risk of mastitis. A new cluster detection method was used, which was adapted to continuous variables and which allowed ASCS variation factors to be taken into account. The statistical unit was the herd-year. A linear regression model for each year allowed adjustment for breed, mean parity, number of calvings for each season, herd size, and farm altitude. Cluster detection was performed on raw data and on residuals of the model through a method based on the Hellinger distance between spatial distributions. The Hellinger distance between farm distributions was computed at different levels of ASCS (or residuals). Temporal ASCS patterns were explored using a computation of correlations and comparisons between spatial structures of the different years. The general ASCS trend over the study period was a decrease. The global Hellinger distance, which was higher than what could have been randomly expected for each of the 5 yr, indicated a significant spatial cluster formation. Cluster mapping over the 5 yr identified several areas, which sometimes differed between detection using raw data and that using ASCS residuals. Temporal correlations between ASCS residuals for each year were positive and decreasing, and 1996 and 2000 appeared spatially different from the other years. The more affected areas were regions that were not specialized in dairy production. During the study period, 2 progressive movements were detected, corresponding to a disappearance of clusters in the northwest and an increase of clusters in the southwest. Cluster detection could aid in the identification of new risk factors that are relevant at different spatial scales, and could help local organizations to supervise the risk of mastitis, and improve udder health management.     

Quinones As Additives During Soda Cooking

Anthraquinone-1-acetic acid is a less effective delignification catalyst than anthraquinone but it gives an enhanced carbohydrate stabilization by converting reducing sugar end groups more effectively to aldonic acid end groups. This reaction produces the hydroquinone form of the additive which is then easily oxidized by oxygen at 80°C. Oxygen treatment favors the end group stabilization. Depolymerization of the cellulose is suppressed by the presence of magnesium hydroxide but cannot be avoided completely.     

Thermal malfunction criteria of fire safety electrical equipment in nuclear power plants

Malfunctions of nuclear power plants' (NPP) fire safety electrical equipment may be the consequence of a fire, leading to an increase of temperature and heat fluxes in a room and its adjacent ones. Electrical equipment manufacturers issue a so‐called ‘maximum temperature of normal operation’ under which a continuous function is guaranteed. However, this manufacturer temperature does not correspond to the notably higher real maximum operating temperature. Exactly knowing this temperature has two impacts: adequate selection of fire safety equipment and new fire probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) damage threshold. Those levels are today very conservative for performance‐based design: 40°C for electronic boards and 55°C for electromechanical materials. That is why Electricité de France, Research and Development Division (EDF R&D), performed several tests in the MILONGA facility to investigate the thermal malfunction levels of cabinet equipment classified as ‘Important for Safety’ by

• first defining what malfunction means, according to the material type and its required function;
• defining a relevant and reliable methodology of tests;
• testing a sample of electromechanical materials and electronic boards used in NPP and
• suggesting new temperature criteria for Fire PRA.

Although the equipment behaviour may be dependent upon the materials of construction and equipment layout, the main results are the malfunction temperatures of 130°C for electromechanical materials and 95°C for electronic boards. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Plasma Etch Processes for Embedded FRAM Integration

We describe the etch processes used for integration of embedded ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) within a standard CMOS logic flow. The ferroelectric module is inserted following front-end contact formation and prior to backend integration using only two additional mask levels: capacitor pattern and bi-level via pattern. The single-mask stack etch process employs a TiAlN hardmask to define Ir/IrO_x/PZT/IrO_x/Ir capacitors. Protective sidewalls can be formed using an etchback process. The bi-level via etch and subsequent metal fill processes complete the FRAM module formation. Functional 4 MB arrays embedded with 5 levels of Cu/FSG integration have been demonstrated.     

Application-independent feature construction based on almost-closedness properties

Feature construction has been studied extensively, including for 0/1 data samples. Given the recent breakthroughs in closedness-related constraint-based mining, we are considering its impact on feature construction for classification tasks. We investigate the use of condensed representations of frequent itemsets based on closedness properties as new features. These itemset types have been proposed to avoid set counting in difficult association rule mining tasks, i.e. when data are noisy and/or highly correlated. However, our guess is that their intrinsic properties (say the maximality for the closed itemsets and the minimality for the δ-free itemsets) should have an impact on feature quality. Understanding this remains fairly open, and we discuss these issues thanks to itemset properties on the one hand and an experimental validation on various data sets (possibly noisy) on the other hand.     

Large-energy-shift photon upconversion in degenerately doped InP nanowires by direct excitation into the electron gas

Realizing photon upconversion in nanostructures is important for many next- generation applications such as biological labelling, infrared detectors and solar cells. In particular nanowires are attractive for optoelectronics because they can easily be electrically contacted. Here we demonstrate photon upconversion with a large energy shift in highly n-doped InP nanowires. Crucially, the mechanism responsible for the upconversion in our system does not rely on multi-photon absorption via intermediate states, thus eliminating the need for high photon fluxes to achieve upconversion. The demonstrated upconversion paves the way for utilizing nanowires--with their inherent flexibility such as electrical contactability and the ability to position individual nanowires--for photon upconversion devices also at low photon fluxes, possibly down to the single photon level in optimised structures.     

Fibroblasts Cultured on Nanowires Exhibit Low Motility,Impaired Cell Division,and DNA Damage

Nanowires are commonly used as tools for interfacing living cells, acting as biomolecule‐delivery vectors or electrodes. It is generally assumed that the small size of the nanowires ensures a minimal cellular perturbation, yet the effects of nanowires on cell migration and proliferation remain largely unknown. Fibroblast behaviour on vertical nanowire arrays is investigated, and it is shown that cell motility and proliferation rate are reduced on nanowires. Fibroblasts cultured on long nanowires exhibit failed cell division, DNA damage, increased ROS content and respiration. Using focused ion beam milling and scanning electron microscopy, highly curved but intact nuclear membranes are observed, showing no direct contact between the nanowires and the DNA. The nanowires possibly induce cellular stress and high respiration rates, which trigger the formation of ROS, which in turn results in DNA damage. These results are important guidelines to the design and interpretation of experiments involving nanowire‐based transfection and electrical characterization of living cells.     

Probing the wurtzite conduction band structure using state filling in highly doped InP nanowires

We have grown InP nanowires doped with hydrogen sulfide, which exhibit sulfur concentrations of up to 1.4%. The highest doped nanowires show a pure wurtzite crystal structure, in contrast to bulk InP which has the zinc blende structure. The nanowires display photoluminescence which is strongly blue shifted compared with the band gap, well into the visible range. We find evidence of a second conduction band minimum at the gamma point about 0.23 eV above the band edge, in excellent agreement with recent theoretical predictions. Electrical measurements show high conductivity and breakdown currents of 10(7) A/cm(2).     

Contact between rolling beams and flat surfaces

This work presents a new approach to model the contact between a circular cross section beam and a flat surface. In a finite element environment, when working with beam elements in contact with surfaces, it is common to consider node or line to surface approaches for describing contact. An offset can be included in normal gap function due to beam cross section dimensions. Such a procedure can give good results in frictionless scenarios, but the friction effects are not usually properly treated. When friction plays a role (e.g., rolling problems or alternating rolling/sliding) more elaboration is necessary. It is proposed here a method that considers an offset not only in normal gap. The basic idea is to modify the classical definition of tangential gap function in order to include the effect of rigid body rotation that occurs in a rolling scenario and, furthermore, consider the moment of friction force. This paper presents the new gap function definition and also its consistent linearization for a direct implementation in a Newton‐Raphson method to solve nonlinear structural problems modeled using beam elements. The methodology can be generalized to any interaction involving elements with rotational degrees of freedom. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hopping Conduction in Mn Ion-Implanted GaAs Nanowires

We report on temperature-dependent charge transport in heavily doped Mn(+)-implanted GaAs nanowires. The results clearly demonstrate that the transport is governed by temperature-dependent hopping processes, with a crossover between nearest neighbor hopping and Mott variable range hopping at about 180 K. From detailed analysis, we have extracted characteristic hopping energies and corresponding hopping lengths. At low temperatures, a strongly nonlinear conductivity is observed which reflects a modified hopping process driven by the high electric field at large bias.