Effects of bovine somatotropin on dry matter intake, milk yield and body temperature in Holstein and Jersey cows during heat stress

Thirty-one lactating Holstein and Jersey cows were used to determine the effect of daily injections of 0 or 20 mg of recombinant bST in hot, humid weather. The comparison period lasted 80 d, from mid-June through August. The maximum and minimum ambient temperature and relative humidity averaged 34.6 and 22.2 degrees C and 100 and 59.8%, respectively. Body temperatures of somatotropin-treated Holsteins were elevated over controls by .2 and .3 degrees C at the a.m. and p.m. milkings, respectively, whereas corresponding treatment effects for Jerseys were .5 and .6 degrees C, thus demonstrating a breed by treatment interaction. The response of milk and FCM yields and apparent efficiency of production to somatotropin administration depended on the level of production prior to treatment. Cows at low pretreatment production increased milk and FCM yields to a greater degree than did cows at higher production. A breed by treatment interaction showed that Holsteins increased milk and FCM yields more than Jerseys upon administration of somatotropin. Intake of DM was not affected by treatment. Cows administered bST lost BW and condition score. Greater heat stress was associated with the higher milk production of cows administered bST.     

Error Probability of FSK Incoherent Diversity Reception with Fast Rice Fading

In this paper we compute the error performanceof noncoherent detection receivers for FSK signalstransmitted over fast frequency-flat Rician fadingchannels. Linearly time-varying fading models are used to derive closed-form expressions for the errorprobability of binary FSK signaling. Error bounds areestablished for the performance of M-ary orthogonal FSK.Simulation results are in excellent agreement with analytical predictions.     

Ultrasoft Liquid Metal Elastomer Foams with Positive and Negative Piezopermittivity for Tactile Sensing

Soft, capacitive tactile (pressure) sensors are important for applications including human–machine interfaces, soft robots, and electronic skins. Such capacitors consist of two electrodes separated by a soft dielectric. Pressing the capacitor brings the electrodes closer together and thereby increases capacitance. Thus, sensitivity to a given force is maximized by using dielectric materials that are soft and have a high dielectric constant, yet such properties are often in conflict with each other. Here, a liquid metal elastomer foam (LMEF) is introduced that is extremely soft (elastic modulus 7.8 kPa), highly compressible (70% strain), and has a high permittivity. Compressing the LMEF displaces the air in the foam structure, increasing the permittivity over a large range (5.6–11.7). This is called “positive piezopermittivity.” Interestingly, it is discovered that the permittivity of such materials decreases (“negative piezopermittivity”) when compressed to large strain due to the geometric deformation of the liquid metal droplets. This mechanism is theoretically confirmed via electromagnetic theory, and finite element simulation. Using these materials, a soft tactile sensor with high sensitivity, high initial capacitance, and large capacitance change is demonstrated. In addition, a tactile sensor powered wirelessly (from 3 m away) with high power conversion efficiency (84%) is demonstrated.     

Spectrally stable Er-fiber laser for application in phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry

A high degree of frequency stability in an Er-fiber laser with the Fabry-Perot configuration was achieved using a long (25-km) optical-feedback loop. The frequency-drift rate was determined to be <1 MHz/min by observing temporal fringes in an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Instantaneous linewidth measured with a delayed self-heterodyne interferometer was less than the 3-kHz resolution limit. The laser was utilized in an optical time-domain reflectometry experiment to detect and locate a time-varying phase perturbation applied to an optical fiber.     

Assembly and Characterizations of Bifunctional Fluorescent and Magnetic Microneedles With One Decade Length Tunability

This report presents the fabrication of bifunctional magnetic and fluorescent microneedles (µNDs) made of a ternary mixture of magnetic nanoparticles (NPs), quantum dots (QDs), and polyelectrolyte. The assembly relies on the electrostatic complexation of negatively charged NPs with positively charged polymer strands and is controlled by the charge ratio between the nanoparticle building blocks and the polymer mortar. The resulting 1D objects can be actuated using an external magnetic field and can be imaged using fluorescence microscopy, thanks to the fluorescent and superparamagnetic properties inherited from their NP constituents. Using a combination of core and surface characterizations and a state‐of‐the‐art image analysis algorithm, the dependence of the brightness and length on the ternary composition is thoroughly investigated. In particular, statistics on hundreds of µNDs with a range of compositions show that the µNDs have a log‐lormal length distribution and that their mean length can be robustly tuned in the 5–50 µm range to match the relevant length scales of various applications in micromixing, bioassays or biomechanics.     

A quantum amplifier model for predicting temporal variations in theoutput power from a semiconductor laser on a picosecond time scale

A new model for simulating temporal fluctuations in the power emitted by a semiconductor laser is described. Light in the cavity is assumed to circulate in the form of traveling photon packets, in which the photon number fluctuates due to the processes of spontaneous emission, stimulated emission, absorption, scattering, and reflection. The dipole dephasing time T plays a critical role in modeling the interaction of the photon packets and gain medium. The Monte Carlo method is used to simulate the temporal behavior of a continuously pumped Fabry-Perot laser. The laser output power is found to exhibit periodic fluctuations at the cavity transit time frequency (longitudinal mode beat frequency). The amplitude of these fluctuations, as well as the relaxation oscillation, which occurs at a much lower frequency, is strongly influenced by the magnitude of T. The results of these simulations are related to the temporal behavior expected from a conventional FP laser     

A 533-MHz BiCMOS superscalar RISC microprocessor

This 533-MHz BiCMOS very large scale integration (VLSI) implementation of the PowerPC architecture contains three pipelines and a large on-chip secondary cache to achieve a peak performance of 1600 MIPS. The 15 mm×10 mm die contains 2.7 M transistors (2M CMOS and 0.7 M bipolar) and dissipates less than 85 W. The die is fabricated in a six-level metal, 0.5-μm BiCMOS process and requires 3.6 and 2.1 V power supplies     

AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser responses to 4.5-MeV proton irradiation

We have irradiated single- and multimode AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays operating at a nominal wavelength of 780 nm with 4.5-MeV protons and doses ranging from 10 to 30 Mrad in the active region. We observed a peak power reduction of about 2% per Mrad in the 14-/spl mu/m aperture, multimode VCSELs. Single-mode VCSELs having an aperture of 6 /spl mu/m exhibited a smaller peak power reduction of 0.4%-1% per Mrad. A slight shift in the current threshold was observed only for the multimode VCSELs at dose levels above 10 Mrad. First results indicate a reduced VCSEL peak laser power output that is dominated by a temperature shift caused by the radiation induced increase in resistive heating. In contrast, the power reduction in edge-emitting lasers is dominated by the enhanced radiation induced nonradiative recombination rate. The VCSEL irradiation was performed with a focused ion micro beam that was rastered over the device surface, ensuring a very uniform exposure of a single device in the array.