Large-signal characterization of DDR silicon IMPATTs operating in millimeter-wave and terahertz regime

The authors have carried out the large-signal characterization of silicon-based double-drift region(DDR) impact avalanche transit time(IMPATT) devices designed to operate up to 0.5 THz using a large-signal simulation method developed by the authors based on non-sinusoidal voltage excitation.The effect of band-to-band tunneling as well as parasitic series resistance on the large-signal properties of DDR Si IMPATTs have also been studied at different mm-wave and THz frequencies.Large-signal simulation results show that DDR Si IMPATT is capable of delivering peak RF power of 633.69mW with 7.95% conversion efficiency at 94GHz for 50% voltage modulation,whereas peak RF power output and efficiency fall to 81.08 mW and 2.01% respectively at 0.5 THz for same voltage modulation.The simulation results are compared with the experimental results and are found to be in close agreement.     

Ant Colony Optimized Fuzzy Control Solution for Frequency Oscillation Suppression

This paper presents a novel approach in addressing a critical power system issue, i.e., automatic generation control (AGC) in a smart grid scenario. It proposes the design and implementation of an optimized fuzzy logic controller (FLC) for AGC of interconnected power network. There are three different sources of power generation considered in the two-area interconnected model of power system network. First area is equipped with a single reheat thermal unit and a superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) unit, while another area has a hydro-unit with SMES. A multi-stage optimization strategy for the optimal solution of FLC for tie-line and frequency oscillation suppression is proposed in this paper using an ant colony optimization technique. The optimization of FLC is carried out in four different stages. The first stage is the optimization of range of input and output variables; the second stage is the optimization of membership function; the third and fourth stages are the optimization for rule base and rule weight optimization, respectively. The performance of the proposed controller is also compared with another control approaches to stabilize P_tie-line and Δf oscillations; these are the Ziegler–Nichols-tuned proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller and genetic algorithm optimized PID controller. A comprehensive analysis of the traditional techniques and proposed techniques is presented on the basis of major dynamic performance parameters, i.e., settling time and peak overshoot.     

Preparation and characterization of amidated pectin based hydrogels for drug delivery system

In the current studies attempts were made to prepare hydrogels by chemical modification of pectin with ethanolamine (EA) in different proportions. Chemically modified pectin products were crosslinked with glutaraldehyde reagent for preparing hydrogels. The hydrogels were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), organic elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction studies (XRD), swelling studies, biocompatibility and hemocompatibility studies. Mechanical properties of the prepared hydrogels were evaluated by tensile test. The hydrogels were loaded with salicylic acid (used as a model drug) and drug release studies were done in a modified Franz’s diffusion cell. FTIR spectroscopy indicated the presence of primary and secondary amide absorption bands. XRD studies indicated increase in crystallinity in the hydrogels as compared to unmodified pectin. The degree of amidation (D _A) and molar and mass reaction yields (Y _M and Y _N) was calculated based on the results of organic elemental analysis. The hydrogels showed good water holding properties and were found to be compatible with B-16 melanoma cells & human blood.     

Fatty Acid Elongation in Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis and Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) represents a risk factor for the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and is characterized by quantitative and qualitative changes in hepatic lipids. Since elongation of fatty acids from C16 to C18 has recently been reported to promote both hepatic lipid accumulation and inflammation we aimed to investigate whether a frequently used mouse NASH model reflects this clinically relevant feature and whether C16 to C18 elongation can be observed in HCC development. Feeding mice a methionine and choline deficient diet to model NASH not only increased total hepatic fatty acids and cholesterol, but also distinctly elevated the C18/C16 ratio, which was not changed in a model of simple steatosis (ob/ob mice). Depletion of Kupffer cells abrogated both quantitative and qualitative methionine-and-choline deficient (MCD)-induced alterations in hepatic lipids. Interestingly, mimicking inflammatory events in early hepatocarcinogenesis by diethylnitrosamine-induced carcinogenesis (48 h) increased hepatic lipids and the C18/C16 ratio. Analyses of human liver samples from patients with NASH or NASH-related HCC showed an elevated expression of the elongase ELOVL6, which is responsible for the elongation of C16 fatty acids. Taken together, our findings suggest a detrimental role of an altered fatty acid pattern in the progression of NASH-related liver disease.     

Clustering noisy data in a reduced dimension space via multivariate regression trees

Cluster analysis is sensitive to noise variables intrinsically contained within high dimensional data sets. As the size of data sets increases, clustering techniques robust to noise variables must be identified. This investigation gauges the capabilities of recent clustering algorithms applied to two real data sets increasingly perturbed by superfluous noise variables. The recent techniques include mixture models of factor analysers and auto-associative multivariate regression trees. Statistical techniques are integrated to create two approaches useful for clustering noisy data: multivariate regression trees with principal component scores and multivariate regression trees with factor scores. The tree techniques generate the superior clustering results.     

Development of a Contextual Family Therapy Therapist Action Index.

Developed a contextual therapist action index (TAI). In Exp 1, 20 contextual family therapists (CFTs) contributed to the development of items that correspond to actions of CFTs as practiced in the field. Exp 2, in which 4 raters used the TAI to assess segments from CFT treatment sessions, reported modest construct validity and moderate degrees of reliability. Exp 3 demonstrated high degrees of discriminate validity in differentiating segments of contextual vs psychoeducational family therapy sessions. The TAI may provide an empirical basis on which to train therapists either to increase or decrease specific behaviors during therapy and aid in the supervision and teaching of family therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhanced Userspace and In-Kernel Trace Filtering for Production Systems

Trace tools like LTTng have a very low impact on the traced software as compared with traditional debuggers. However, for long runs, in resource constrained and high throughput environments, such as embedded network switching nodes and production servers, the collective tracing impact on the target software adds up considerably. The overhead is not just in terms of execution time but also in terms of the huge amount of data to be stored, processed and analyzed offline. This paper presents a novel way of dealing with such huge trace data generation by introducing a Just-In-Time (JIT) filter based tracing system, for sieving through the flood of high frequency events, and recording only those that are relevant, when a specific condition is met. With a tiny filtering cost, the user can filter out most events and focus only on the events of interest. We show that in certain scenarios, the JIT compiled filters prove to be three times more effective than similar interpreted filters. We also show that with the increasing number of filter predicates and context variables, the benefits of JIT compilation increase with some JIT compiled filters being even three times faster than their interpreted counterparts. We further present a new architecture, using our filtering system, which can enable co-operative tracing between kernel and process tracing VMs (virtual machines) that share data efficiently. We demonstrate its use through a tracing scenario where the user can dynamically specify syscall latency through the userspace tracing VM whose effect is reflected in tracing decisions made by the kernel tracing VM. We compare the data access performance on our shared memory system and show an almost 100 times improvement over traditional data sharing for co-operative tracing.     

Hardware trace reconstruction of runtime compiled code

Hardware tracing has emerged as a low‐cost technique to analyze systems at a very fine granularity, thus mitigating the need for software‐only trace approaches for performance analysis. State‐of‐the‐art trace hardware on modern Intel and ARM processors allows recording change‐of‐flow instructions in executable binaries, such as branches, for off‐line reconstruction. This conventional userspace–based trace reconstruction, however, is not robust enough in the common scenarios where runtime code is being generated, compiled, and executed. We therefore propose a novel kernel‐assisted mechanism called FlowJIT to reconstruct hardware traces with a low overhead of around 1.3 μs per code page modification event. We further show the efficacy or our technique with the help of 2 illustrative usecases that cover the JIT compiled code scenario and a same‐page instruction modification scenario. Our implementation has been open sourced as a patch for the Linux kernel.     

Identification of green and dry vegetation components with a cross-correlogram spectral matching technique

A cross-correlogram spectral matching technique is proposed for discrimination of green and dry vegetation. By examining the reflectance spectra of fresh green leaves, dry leaves, dry bark, and dry wood, it was found that dry leaves had a diagnostic absorption feature near 1730 nm and the chlorophyll absorption feature near 680 nm was the main diagnostic feature in green leaves. By calculating the cross correlation between a reference spectrum and test spectra at different match positions in these two spectral regions, it was possible to separate green leaf, dry leaf, and dry bark components with 100 per cent accuracy.