A BiCMOS dynamic carry lookahead adder circuit for VLSIimplementation of high-speed arithmetic unit

A BiCMOS dynamic carry lookahead circuit that is free from race problems is presented. A 16 b full-adder test circuit, which has been designed based on a 2 μm BiCMOS technology, shows a more than five times improvement in speed as compared to the CMOS Manchester carry lookahead (MCLA) circuit. The speed advantage of the BiCMOS dynamic carry lookahead circuit is even greater in a 32- or 64-b adder     

Cluster analysis in industrial market segmentation through artificial neural network

Market segmentation has commonly applied cluster analysis. This study intends to make the comparison of conventional two-stage method with proposed two-stage method through the simulated data. The proposed two-stage method is the combination of self-organizing feature maps and K-means method. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is better than the conventional two-stage method based on the rate of misclassification.     

Quasi-saturation capacitance behavior of a DMOS device

This paper reports a simulation study on the capacitance characteristics of a double-diffused metal-oxide semiconductor (DMOS) device operating in the quasi-saturation region. From the analysis, the capacitance effect of the gate oxide upon the drift region cannot be modeled as an overlap capacitance, because the drain-gate/source-gate capacitances of the DMOS device may exceed the gate-oxide capacitance due to the larger voltage drop over the gate oxide than the change in the imposed gate bias when entering the quasi-saturation region. This effect can be the explanation for the plateau behavior in the gate charge plot during turn-on and turn-off of the DMOS device. Based on the small-signal equivalent capacitance model, the accumulated charge in the drift region below the gate oxide may thoroughly associate with the drain terminal in the prequasi-saturation region and with the source terminal in the quasi-saturation region     

Application of HUMF13A01 (AAAG)n STR polymorphism to the genetic diagnosis of coagulation factor XIII deficiency

Deficiency of the A subunit of coagulation factor XIII causes a severe bleeding disorder requiring life long replacement therapy. The mutations causing A subunit deficiency appear to be very heterogeneous, and it is impractical to identify each mutation before genetic counselling or prenatal diagnosis can be attempted. In this study we have shown that a highly polymorphic short tandem repeat element, HUMF13A01 (AAAG)n that occurs in the 5' flanking sequence of the factor XIII A subunit gene, can be used to follow the segregation of deficiency causing mutations. We studied 6 families with factor XIII A subunit deficiency from 5 different ethnic groups. All parents were heterozygous for the repetitive element and therefore all the families were informative. The linked polymorphism was used to carry out the first prenatal diagnosis of factor XIII A subunit deficiency. The analysis of this polymorphism by the polymerase chain reaction is rapid, reliable, requires little DNA and is ideal for the genetic analysis of factor XIII A subunit deficiency.     

The crystal structure of an Fe-superoxide dismutase from the hyperthermophile Aquifex pyrophilus at 1.9 A resolution: structural basis for thermostability

The incidence of stress fractures is increasing among competitive and recreational athletes as well as among children and the elderly. By understanding the continuum of bone's response to stress and maintaining an appropriate index of suspicion, the health care provider can diagnose these injuries appropriately. An accurate history and examination is essential and will differentiate stress fractures from other stress reactions. The more common stress fractures are discussed.     

Myocardial imaging with technetium-99m-tetrofosmin: comparison of one-day and two-day protocols

There is no evidence of myocardial redistribution after tetrofosmin injection, therefore, two separate injections are needed to differentiate scar from ischemia with this tracer. The injections can be given on the same day (one-day protocol) or on separate days (two-day protocol). As part of a Phase II clinical study, a one-day protocol was compared with a two-day protocol. METHODS: Fifty-five patients with suspected coronary artery disease were studied according to the following protocol: on the first day at rest, anterior, left lateral, left anterior oblique 40 degrees and 70 degrees images were acquired 30 min after injection of 8 mCi of tetrofosmin for 5 min each. Two days later, exercise and rest images were acquired on the same day. At peak exercise, 8 mCi of tetrofosmin were injected and 30 min later the same four standard planar images were recorded as on Day one. Four hours after the exercise injection, 24 mCi of tetrofosmin were injected at rest and imaging was repeated 30 min later. Qualitative comparisons between the one- and two-day protocols were performed in 50 patients in whom all data were available following blinded evaluation of images by three readers. RESULTS: All three readers reported identical results for the 26 patients. A difference in extent or location between the observers was found in seven patients, differences between normal and abnormal in eight patients, while discrepancies between ischemia and necrosis were noted in four patients. In five patients, an ischemic area was found according to the one-day protocol, but according to the data of the two-day protocol, this area was judged to be necrotic. One observer reported the opposite in one patient. These discrepancies between the reversibility of defects were restricted to the inferior wall. Comparison with 201Tl data showed no systematic pattern of variation. CONCLUSION: Tetrofosmin can be used in a one-day protocol. However, in planar imaging, the inferior wall should be reported with caution.     

More investigations of leakage and nonleakage conductor-backedcoplanar waveguide

Through rigorous full-wave analysis, the effective dielectric constant, normalized attenuation constant, characteristic impedance, and radiation pattern of two types of conductor-backed coplanar waveguides are obtained. The analytic results show that the leakage effect is not only controlled by the thickness and dielectric constant of the substrate but also by the slot width. The leakage power transforms to a radiation space wave and a surface wave, the transverse electric field diagrams in the substrate and the far-zone radiation pattern verify the leakage phenomenon. The first structure has the maximum radiation intensity in the endfire direction, while the second one which has more leaky waves radiates into the air, is better served as a radiating device. For both structures under the nonleakage condition, the characteristic impedance is sensitive to the change of the strip width but not the slot width. Using these properties, the nonleaky and leaky circuits can exist on the same circuit board by choosing appropriate circuit dimensions     

Flows in rectangular microchannels driven by capillary force and gravity

Capillary phenomena was studied and discussed by the scholars about 200 years ago, but the progress was slow due to the limited equipment and manufacture precision of the microchannel. In recent years, because of the rapid development of MEMS and micromachining, many applications of the capillary flow is widely developing in some modern processes, such as underfilling of flip chip, flow in microfluidic chip or biochip, and a variety of other fields.     

A compact LTCC branch-line coupler UsingModified-T equivalent-circuit modelfor transmission line

In this letter, a compact branch-line coupler is proposed by making good use of the three-dimensional layout capability of the low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate. This branch-line coupler is accomplished by using lumped-inductors and lumped-capacitors to realize the modified-T equivalent-circuit model for the transmission line so that the circuit size may drastically be reduced. Specifically, a very compact LTCC branch-line coupler with a size of 0.079/spl lambda//spl times/0.0717/spl lambda/ is implemented and carefully examined, where /spl lambda/ is the wavelength of the multilayer structure at the operating frequency f/sub 0/.