A quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS process for fast 16Mb SRAM's

An advanced, high-performance, quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS technology has been developed for fast 16 Mb SRAM's. A split word-line bitcell architecture, using four levels of polysilicon and two self-aligned contacts, achieves a cell area of 8.61 μm² with conventional I-line lithography and 7.32 μm² with I-line plus phase-shift or with deep UV lithography. The process features PELOX isolation to provide a 1.0 μm active pitch, MOSFET transistors designed for a 0.80 μm gate poly pitch, a double polysilicon bipolar transistor with aggressively scaled parasitics, and a thin-film polysilicon transistor to enhance bitcell stability. A quadruple-well structure improves soft error rate (SER) and allows simultaneous optimization of MOSFET and bipolar performance     

Parasitic bipolar gain in fully depleted n-channel SOI MOSFET's

Fully depleted SOI MOSFET's include an inherent parasitic lateral bipolar structure with a floating base. We present here the first complete physically based explanation of the bipolar gain mechanism, and its dependence on bias and technological parameters. A simple, one-dimensional physical model, with no fitting parameters, is constructed, and is shown to agree well with simulations and measurements performed on a new type of SOI MOSFET structure. It is shown that parameters which affect the gain, such as SOI layer thickness, body doping concentration and gate and drain voltages, do so primarily by affecting the concentration of holes in the body region. Thus, current gain falls dramatically with increasing drain voltage due to the associated impact ionization driven increase in the hole concentration. Gummel plots of this parasitic bipolar indicate an apparent ideality factor of 0.5 for the hole current, due to the body hole concentration's dependence on drain voltage     

Fabrication of low-loss IR-transmitting Ge30As10Se30Te30 glass fibers

Improved purification and processing techniques have been utilized to fabricate Ge₃₀As₁₀Se₃₀Te₃₀ glass fibers with a minimum loss of O.11 dB/m at 6.6 μm. This is the lowest loss reported for any telluride glass fiber in the infrared region. Furthermore, the fibers exhibit less than 1 dB/m loss between 5.25 and 9.5 μm     

Self-efficacy expectations predict survival for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Evaluated the validity of self-efficacy expectations as predictors of mortality for 119 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Ss completed 4 physiological measures that represent common clinical indicators of disease severity: forced expiratory volume in 1 s(FEV1.0), arterial blood gas measurement of resting partial pressure of oxygen (PaO?), single-breath diffusing capacity (DLCO), and maximum oxygen uptake (V02max) during exercise. In addition, self-reported self-efficacy expectation for walking on a treadmill was measured. Self-efficacy was a significant univariate predictor of 5-yr survival. However, when controlling for FEV1.0 in multivariate survival analysis, self-efficacy had only a marginal effect. Simple self-report scales may provide significant information about health status. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Digital filter bank design quadratic-constrained formulation

Formulate the filter bank design problem as an quadratic-constrained least-squares minimization problem. The solution of the minimization problem converges very quickly since the cost function as well as the constraints are quadratic functions with respect to the unknown parameters. The formulations of the perfect-reconstruction cosine-modulated filter bank, of the near-perfect-reconstruction pseudo-QMF bank, and of the two-channel biorthogonal linear-phase filter bank are derived using the proposed approach. Compared with other design methods, the proposed technique yields PR filter banks with much higher stopband attenuation. The proposed technique can also be extended to design multidimensional filter banks     

Eyewitness persuasion: How and how well do fact finders judge the accuracy of adults' and children's memory reports?

Children (aged 5–6 and 9–10 yrs) and adults participated in an eventful laboratory session and provided memory reports of the session. In 3 experiments, college students and parents viewed videotapes of highly accurate and highly inaccurate reports. In 2 experiments, these "fact finders" rated adult witnesses more believable and accurate than younger child witnesses, even when both groups were equally accurate. Perceptions of confidence and consistency mediated credibility judgments. Accurate witnesses were judged more believable and accurate than inaccurate witnesses. Higher perceived confidence, longer free recall, and fewer memory failure admissions were associated with more accurate adult memory reports. Fact finders overused confidence and underused the other cues in achieving modest accuracy discernment. The results suggest how strong and weak memory reports differ and how fact finders may learn to differentiate them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Life stressors and social resources affect posttreatment outcomes among depressed patients.

Examined pre- and posttreatment changes in life stressors and social resources and their association with treatment outcomes in a 12-mo follow-up of 424 Ss (aged 18–83 yrs) with unipolar depression. Assessment measures included the Family Environment Scale, Work Environment Scale, and Health and Daily Living Form. As expected, Ss reported significant, multidimensional improvements in their functioning at follow-up. There were modest increases in Ss' social resources but, suprisingly, no overall decrease in stressors. Life stress and resource factors were significantly related to Ss' functioning at follow-up, even after considering the severity of their dysfunction at treatment intake and their length of treatment. Implications for developing a general body of knowledge about the process of recovery and relapse in behavioral disorders are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic conversion of triangular finite element meshes to quadrilateral elements

A method is presented for the fully automatic conversion of a general finite element mesh containing triangular elements into a mesh composed of exclusively quadrilateral elements. The initial mesh may be constructed of entirely triangular elements or may consist of a mixture of triangular and quadrilateral elements. The technique used employs heuristic procedures and criteria to selectively combine adjacent triangular elements into quadrilaterals based on preestablished criteria for element quality. Additional procedures are included to eliminate isolated triangles. The methods operates completely without user intervention once the nodal co-ordinates and element connectivity of the original mesh are supplied.