微软公司的Astrid McClean详解Exchange Server 2010

本文作者采访了微软Exchange团队的高级技术产品经理。重点讨论了Exchange Server 2010的升级问题,以及它内置的一些新功能。例如个人存档、数据库可用性组、最终用户策略、基于角色的访问控制等。相信这篇访谈会坚定你升级到新版本的决心。     

Fabrication of planar cobalt electrodes separated by a sub-10nm gap using high resolution electron beam lithography with negative PMMA

We present a fabrication process of cobalt nanoelectrodes compatible with spin-dependent transport measurements through a few or a single nano-object. It consists in etching a cobalt thin layer into pairs of planar nanoelectrodes separated by a nanometric gap using a negative Poly-MethylMethAcrylate (PMMA) mask patterned by high resolution electron beam lithography (HREBL). The irradiation parameters of 200keV HREBL on PMMA have been investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to define accurately the PMMA transformation from positive to negative tone. The influence of the electron dose and the designed gap on the final gap between electrodes is presented. This complete study proves that PMMA can be used as a HREBL negative resist to fabricate nanoelectrodes separated by a controlled and reproducible gap ranging from 5nm to several tens of nanometers.     

Influence of temperature on the liver circadian clock in the ruin lizard Podarcis sicula

Reptiles represent an interesting animal model to investigate the influence of temperature on molecular circadian clocks. The ruin lizard Podarcis sicula lives in a continental climate and it is subjected to wide range of environmental temperatures during the course of the year. As consequence, ruin lizard daily activity pattern includes either the hibernation or periods of inactivity determined by hypothermia. Here we showed the rhythmic expression of two clock genes, lPer2 and lClock, in the liver of active lizards exposed to summer photo-thermoperiodic conditions. Interestingly, the exposition of lizards to hypothermic conditions, typical of winter season, induced a strong dampening of clock genes mRNA rhythmicity with a coincident decrease of levels. We also examined the qualitative and quantitative distribution of lPER2 and lCLOCK protein in different cellular compartments during the 24-h cycle. In the liver of active lizards both proteins showed a rhythmic expression profile in all cellular compartments. After 3 days at 6 degrees C, some temporal fluctuations of the lCLOCK and lPER2 are still detectable, although, with some marked modifications in respect to the values detected in the liver of active lizards. Besides demonstrating the influence of low temperature on the lizard liver circadian oscillators, present results could provide new essential information for comparative studies on the influence of temperature on the circadian system across vertebrate classes.     

Three-dimensional reconstruction on PC-Windows platform for evaluation of living donor nephrectomy

Evaluation of renal vasculature was necessary for preoperative donor assessment in living donor kidney transplantation, and the ability to view the vascular imaging in three-dimensional (3D) space should be helpful undoubtedly. Considering the widespread use of personal computer (PC) systems, we aimed to find a handy way to display the anatomy of the renal arterial and venous systems of potential donors on PC-Windows platform. Ten living-related donors were included in this study. Serial computed tomography (CT) images were loaded into Amira 3.1 running on a PC with Windows XP. Following image crop, segmentation and 3D reconstruction, we got the 3D images and the video clips. According to the displays which were confirmed by latter intraoperative findings, eight donors had single renal vessels, one had a left accessory renal artery and one had a right accessory renal artery. This project offered a new approach to evaluate the renal vessel anatomy in living donor kidney transplantation, and it was favorable for accuracy and popularizing.     

Learning with "relevance": using a third factor to stabilize Hebbian learning

It is a well-known fact that Hebbian learning is inherently unstable because of its self-amplifying terms: the more a synapse grows, the stronger the postsynaptic activity, and therefore the faster the synaptic growth. This unwanted weight growth is driven by the autocorrelation term of Hebbian learning where the same synapse drives its own growth. On the other hand, the cross-correlation term performs actual learning where different inputs are correlated with each other. Consequently, we would like to minimize the autocorrelation and maximize the cross-correlation. Here we show that we can achieve this with a third factor that switches on learning when the autocorrelation is minimal or zero and the cross-correlation is maximal. The biological counterpart of such a third factor is a neuromodulator that switches on learning at a certain moment in time. We show in a behavioral experiment that our three-factor learning clearly outperforms classical Hebbian learning.     

Efficient computation of Morse-Smale complexes for three-dimensional scalar functions

The Morse-Smale complex is an efficient representation of the gradient behavior of a scalar function, and critical points paired by the complex identify topological features and their importance. We present an algorithm that constructs the Morse-Smale complex in a series of sweeps through the data, identifying various components of the complex in a consistent manner. All components of the complex, both geometric and topological, are computed, providing a complete decomposition of the domain. Efficiency is maintained by representing the geometry of the complex in terms of point sets.     

The clinical repair of teeth using direct filling materials: engineering considerations

This paper reviews the way in which teeth damaged by caries may be repaired clinically. The mechanical effects of caries are described, as are the materials available to repair the damage caused by this disease. Studies are reported which have shown that caries reduces the compressive strength of the tooth to less than 50 per cent of its original value and that, by use of appropriate materials and placement techniques, this can be restored to some 80 per cent of this value. However, very few studies have been carried out which view tooth repair from an engineering perspective. Instead, emphasis is placed on determining clinical durability of repairs. This is related to repair strength but brings in other factors, such as the oral hygiene of the patient. Despite this complication, durability studies show that modern restorative materials perform well under clinical conditions, from which it may be concluded that the repair process allows a structure to be fabricated that is essentially sound from an engineering viewpoint, even if inferior to the original tooth structure provided by nature.     

Optimal neuronal tuning for finite stimulus spaces

The efficiency of neuronal encoding in sensory and motor systems has been proposed as a first principle governing response properties within the central nervous system. We present a continuation of a theoretical study presented by Zhang and Sejnowski, where the influence of neuronal tuning properties on encoding accuracy is analyzed using information theory. When a finite stimulus space is considered, we show that the encoding accuracy improves with narrow tuning for one- and two-dimensional stimuli. For three dimensions and higher, there is an optimal tuning width.     

Network visualization by semantic substrates

Networks have remained a challenge for information visualization designers because of the complex issues of node and link layout coupled with the rich set of tasks that users present. This paper offers a strategy based on two principles: (1) layouts are based on user-defined semantic substrates, which are non-overlapping regions in which node placement is based on node attributes, (2) users interactively adjust sliders to control link visibility to limit clutter and thus ensure comprehensibility of source and destination. Scalability is further facilitated by user control of which nodes are visible. We illustrate our semantic substrates approach as implemented in NVSS 1.0 with legal precedent data for up to 1122 court cases in three regions with 7645 legal citations