Event-Based Techniques to Debug an Object Request Broker

This work presents a debugging system built for the Object Request Broker (ORB) used in the construction of Solaris MC, a multicomputer OS. Even though it has been built and tested on a particular ORB, we believe similar ideas could be employed on other ORBs with similar structure and goals. The goal of this system is to provide a means to stress the ORB behavior in a controlled manner while logging the events occurred during its execution. The tool, called the Fault Injection and Event Logging Tool (FIELT) helps system programmers to find possible inconsistencies in the code by means of a post-mortem analysis of the collected trace data. The approach taken to design the event logging follows the event-driven techniques to monitorize distributed systems. Failures in the ORB are injected by software instrumentation and these injected failures are considered as special events. This allows us to reason about the correctness of the ORB in a broad sense, where its expected behavior includes to gracefully cope with failures. The number of potentially relevant events produced during the ORB execution is unmanageably high. There is, thus, a need to find a minimum subset of those events which, without losing relevant system behavior, allows us to infer its correctness (or lack of). We address this problem using a new model for ORB computations, assigning each event produced by the ORB to one of the high level objects it manages.     

Triacylglycerols and regiospecific fatty acid analyses of philippine seed oils

Three Philippine seed oils, namely coconut (Cocos nucifera Linn.), pilinut (Canarium ovatum Engl.), and cashew (Anacardium occidentale Linn.), which were selected for their local abundance and availability, were examined for their triacylglycerol profiles and fatty acid compositions. Triacylglycerol molecular species in terms of carbon number and partition number were determined by gas chromatography and liquid chromatography, respectively. The distribution of fatty acids in the primary and secondary positions of the glycerol backbones for the three oils were examined by regiospecific analysis by using pancreatic lipase. Coconut oil had high concentrations of lauric and myristic acids, while the other two oils did not have such fatty acids. Lauric acid in coconut oil and linoleic acid in pilinut oil were distributed mainly in the primary positions (sn-1,3) of the glycerol backbone. Trilaurin and dioleylpalmitoylglycerol were the major triglycerides in coconut and pilinut oils, respectively.     

Vaccines for Non-Viral Cancer Prevention

Cancer vaccines are a type of immune therapy that seeks to modulate the host’s immune system to induce durable and protective immune responses against cancer-related antigens. The little clinical success of therapeutic cancer vaccines is generally attributed to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment at late-stage diseases. The administration of cancer-preventive vaccination at early stages, such as pre-malignant lesions or even in healthy individuals at high cancer risk could increase clinical efficacy by potentiating immune surveillance and pre-existing specific immune responses, thus eliminating de novo appearing lesions or maintaining equilibrium. Indeed, research focus has begun to shift to these approaches and some of them are yielding encouraging outcomes.     

Use of pure glycerol in fattening heavy pigs

Eighty Italian Duroc×Italian Large White pigs (BW 42.6±3.37kg) were used to determine the effects of pure glycerol on growth performance and meat quality of heavy pigs. Pigs were divided into five groups receiving 0% (control), 5% or 10% during the growing and finishing phases (42.6-160kg BW) (G+F5,G+F10) or 5% or 10% during the finishing period (100-160kg BW) (FIN5,FIN10) of pure glycerol in substitution for maize meal (on a dry matter basis). The pigs were slaughtered at approximately 160kg BW. The growth performance of pigs fed 5% glycerol did not differ from controls regardless of feeding duration, whereas those fed 10% glycerol showed reduced growth and poorer feed:gain ratio. Fat quality and meat suitability for raw ham curing were not affected by dietary treatment. Differences were not consistent enough to draw any conclusion about the effects of feeding glycerol on sensory characteristics.     

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in frying oils and snacks

The high incidence of lung cancer observed among Chinese women has been associated with exposure to fumes from cooking oil. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a class of potentially mutagenic substances emitted from cooking oils heated at high temperatures. The objective of this study was to investigate whether deep frying with different oils under different conditions leads to the development of PAHs either in the oil or in the fried product (snacks). PAH analysis was carried out with solid-phase extraction followed by reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography and spectrofluorometric detection. Different oils were used to fry chips and extruded snacks in different industrial plants (continuous frying) at temperatures between 170 and 205 degrees C, and peanut oil was used to fry French fries and fish (discontinuous frying) at temperatures between 160 and 185 degrees C. No appreciable differences in PAH load was observed in the same oil before and after frying. Both before and after frying, the benzo[a]pyrene concentration in oils ranged from trace to 0.7 ppb. All the analyzed samples, including oils from fried snacks, had benzo[a]pyrene concentrations well below the 2 ppb limit recently proposed by the European Community.     

Diode-pumped 2 μm vibronic (Tm3+, Yb3+):KLu(WO4)2 laser

We report on laser operation in a (6 at. % Tm, 5 at. % Yb):KLu(WO4)2 codoped crystal. The vibrational frequencies of KLu(WO4)2 are coupled to the electronic transitions of Tm3+ at 1946 nm, creating virtual final laser levels at higher energy than the ground level 3H6 of Tm3+. The longest recorded laser wavelength was 2039 nm, which is longer than permitted by a pure electronic transition in Tm3+ ions in KLu(WO4)2. We show that every laser wavelength can be explained with the electron-phonon coupling effect, where the vibration frequencies were determined through Raman spectroscopy.     

Prussian blue analogues of reduced dimensionality

Mixed-valence polycyanides (Prussian Blue analogues) possess a rich palette of properties spanning from room-temperature ferromagnetism to zero thermal expansion, which can be tuned by chemical modifications or the application of external stimuli (temperature, pressure, light irradiation). While molecule-based materials can combine physical and chemical properties associated with molecular-scale building blocks, their successful integration into real devices depends primarily on higher-order properties such as crystal size, shape, morphology, and organization. Herein a study of a new reduced-dimensionality system based on Prussian Blue analogues (PBAs) is presented. The system is built up by means of a modified Langmuir-Blodgett technique, where the PBA is synthesized from precursors in a self-limited reaction on a clay mineral surface. The focus of this work is understanding the magnetic properties of the PBAs in different periodic, low-dimensional arrangements, and the influence of the "on surface" synthesis on the final properties and dimensionality of the system.