Large capacitance and fast polarization response of thin electrolyte dielectrics by spin coating for two-dimensional MoS2 devices

Nano Research - A spin-coating method was applied to obtain thinner and smoother PEO/LiClO4 polymer electrolyte films (EFs) with a lower level of crystallization than those obtained using a...     

Proof Lengths for Equational Completion

We first show that ground term-rewriting systems can be completed in a polynomial number of rewriting steps, if the appropriate data structure for terms is used. We then apply this result to study the lengths of critical pair proofs in non-ground systems, and obtain bounds on the lengths of critical pair proofs in the non-ground case. We show how these bounds depend on the types of inference steps that are allowed in the proofs.     

Tissue dynamics spectroscopy for three-dimensional tissue-based drug screening

Tissue dynamics spectroscopy combines dynamic light scattering with short-coherence digital holography to capture intracellular motion inside multicellular tumor spheroid tissue models. The cellular mechanical activity becomes an endogenous imaging contrast agent for motility contrast imaging. Fluctuation spectroscopy is performed on dynamic speckle from the proliferating shell and hypoxic core to generate drug-response spectrograms that are frequency versus time representations of the changes in spectral content induced by an applied compound or an environmental perturbation. A combination of 28 reference compounds and conditions applied to rat osteogenic UMR-106 spheroids generated spectrograms that were crosscorrelated in a similarity matrix used for unsupervised hierarchical clustering of similar compound responses. This work establishes the feasibility of tissue dynamics spectroscopy for three-dimensional tissue-based phenotypic profiling of drug response as a fully endogenous probe of the response of tissue to reference compounds.     

On improving the performance of large parallel lattice Boltzmann flow simulations in heterogeneous porous media

Classical Cartesian domain decompositions for parallel lattice Boltzmann simulations of fluid flow through heterogeneous porous media are doomed to workload imbalance as the number of processors increases, thus leading to decreasing parallel performance. A one-lattice lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) implementation with vector data structure combined with even fluid node partitioning domain decomposition and fully-optimized data transfer layout is presented. It is found to provide nearly-optimal workload balance, lower memory usage and better computational performance than classical slice decomposition techniques using sparse matrix data structures. Predictive memory usage and parallel performance models are also established and observed to be in very good agreement with data corresponding to numerical fluid flow simulations performed through 3-dimensional packings of cylinders and polydisperse spheres.     

Confidence intervals for dependent data: Equating non-overlap with statistical significance

We revisit the problem of determining confidence interval widths for the comparison of means. For the independent two-sample (two-sided) case, Goldstein and Healy (1995) draw attention to the fact that comparisons based on 95% error bars are not very effective in assessing the statistical significance of the difference in means and derive the correct confidence interval for such a comparison. We provide an extension to Goldstein and Healy (1995) to account for the correlation structure and unequal variances. We use the results to develop rules of thumb for evaluating differences, in an exploratory manner, like Moses (1987) and Cumming (2009), from the independent case. We illustrate the method for the simple comparison of two means in a real data set, provide R code that may be easily implemented in practice, and discuss the extension of the method to other applied problems.     

Managing as designing: ‘opportunity knocks’ for the IS field?

In response to anxieties about our discipline's decline, this opinion piece ‘looks to the future’, arguing a strong prospectus for the IS field, based on its direct relevance to general management practice. The thesis set out is inspired by the recent upsurge in interest in ‘managing as designing’. Reformulating management as design, I argue that we have a formidable knowledge-base of tools, theories and critique relevant to any manager, not just the MIS-inclined specialist. A case study of yet another failed information system (in U.K. children's services) is presented to show just how uniquely relevant our discipline is, in the workplace of today. Other pertinent issues are explored, such as synergies with the growing vogue for evidence-based management. The paper concludes by considering implications for research, including the need for a less exclusive approach to publishing and dissemination emphasising the need to make our work more accessible to lay practitioners.     

FacetAtlas: multifaceted visualization for rich text corpora

Documents in rich text corpora usually contain multiple facets of information. For example, an article about a specific disease often consists of different facets such as symptom, treatment, cause, diagnosis, prognosis, and prevention. Thus, documents may have different relations based on different facets. Powerful search tools have been developed to help users locate lists of individual documents that are most related to specific keywords. However, there is a lack of effective analysis tools that reveal the multifaceted relations of documents within or cross the document clusters. In this paper, we present FacetAtlas, a multifaceted visualization technique for visually analyzing rich text corpora. FacetAtlas combines search technology with advanced visual analytical tools to convey both global and local patterns simultaneously. We describe several unique aspects of FacetAtlas, including (1) node cliques and multifaceted edges, (2) an optimized density map, and (3) automated opacity pattern enhancement for highlighting visual patterns, (4) interactive context switch between facets. In addition, we demonstrate the power of FacetAtlas through a case study that targets patient education in the health care domain. Our evaluation shows the benefits of this work, especially in support of complex multifaceted data analysis.     

OpenCL: A Parallel Programming Standard for Heterogeneous Computing Systems

We provide an overview of the key architectural features of recent microprocessor designs and describe the programming model and abstractions provided by OpenCL, a new parallel programming standard targeting these architectures.