The influence of temperature and humidity on the life-cycle of Ephestia kuehniella Zeller (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae)

The development of Ephestia kuehniella was followed carefully on white flour at constant temperatures ranging from 7.5° to 31°C at humidities from 0 to 75% r.h. The lower limit of temperature for complete development was about 12°C although a few adults of a stock collected recently emerged at 10°C. Adults emerged at 28 but not at 31°C. Generally, development took longer and survival was poorer at 40 than at 70% r.h. However, at 20 and 25°C survival was good even at 15% r.h., and at 25°C, 18 out of 50 larvae reached the adult stage at a humidity near 0% r.h. Development was fastest at 25°C, 75% r.h., taking a mean of 74 days from oviposition to adult emergence.Oviposition occurred at 7.5 but not at 5°C. Mating was unsuccessful at 12.5°C. Eggs hatched at all temperatures between 12 and 31°C at every r.h. used. A few eggs from two field stocks hatched at 10°C but none did so at 7.5°C.At 12 C no larvae pupated at humidities below 70% r.h., and none pupated at 31°C at any humidity. Larval development was most rapid at 25°C, 75% r.h., taking about 60 days. The shortest mean pupal period, 9 days, occurred at 28°C, 70% r.h. In an experiment with field stocks, many larvae pupated at 10°C but none at 7.5°C.This study confirms E. kuehniella as essentially a temperate species that prefers heated premises such as bakeries and mills for rapid development. Its ability to develop on food at a low e.r.h. fits it further for life in flour mills.     

Visible photoluminescence from Ge nanoclusters implanted in nanoporous aluminum oxide films

Nanoporous aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) films with uniform porous size of 45 nm prepared by the electrochemical process in inorganic acid medium were implanted at room temperature (RT) with 120 keV Ge⁺ ions with a fluence of 1.2×10¹⁶ cm⁻². The nucleation and growths of Ge nanoparticles, were obtained by thermal annealing of the implanted samples at the temperature range of 200-600 °C. The size and distribution of the nanoparticles were characterized by photoluminescence (PL) measurements. The photoluminescence measurements as a function of the annealing temperature shows that at low annealing temperature (200 °C), the sample presents a low intensity and broad emission band centered at 5456 Å consistent with emission band characteristics of nanocluster of Ge with diameter in the range of 4-8 nm, as the annealing temperature increases to 400 °C the PL intensity increases by a factor of almost 20 and the emission band suffers a small red shift. The intensity increases can be related to the increase of the number of Ge nanocluster. At the annealing temperature of 600 °C, the emission band is considerably red shifted by almost 172 Å and the emission intensity decreases significantly, strongly suggesting that nanocrystalline Ge having a character of direct optical transitions exhibits the visible photoluminescence.     

Automatic adjustment of a medical imaging data acquisition system to unknown delays in the input communication channels

In this article, novel FIFO and RAM-based Synchronization Modules to keep synchronism throughout the input channels of a Data Acquisition Electronics (DAE) system are proposed. DAE is a main component of a Medical Imaging System, namely, a Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) system. DAE input data comes from a scanner constituted by an array of scintillating crystals. The scanner captures radiation generated by human cells injected with a radioactive substance and converts it into electrical signals. The corresponding digital information is sent to the DAE. In order to deal with the huge amount of data, flowing at high data rates, point-to-point (p2p) communication channels are used between the scanner and the DAE. Propagation delays associated with the different communication channels may change differently. Additionally, differences among channel delays may exceed one clock period. Keeping synchronism in these circumstances requires more than the classical asynchronous FIFO solution. All these aspects motivate the work proposed in this article. The PEM DAE system is a multi-board, multi-FPGA, multi-clock domain system. Therefore, the DAE architecture follows a Globally Asynchronous, Locally Synchronous (GALS) design style. The novel Synchronization Modules proposed in this article are implemented in the DAE. The effectiveness of these new structures is validated through simulation and laboratorial test. Simulation and test results are presented.     

Calibration Enabled Scalable Current Sensor Module for Quiescent Current Testing

Semiconductor testing is aimed at screening fabrication defects that impact expected functionality. While catastrophic defects result in non working devices, parametric faults result in marginalities and are of increasing concern with deep sub-micron process technologies. This work presents a scheme to monitor Circuit-Under-Test (CUT) static bias current to identify catastrophic as well as parametric faults. All circuits require a deterministic amount of DC bias current which may vary outside the specifications when faults exist within the circuit. We propose a compensated current measurement Built-in-Current-Sensor (BICS) scheme, which can be used for sub-system level/circuit-level bias current measurements. The BICS provides accessibility to internal blocks and enables isolated parametric testing. Calibration routine enables process independence and provides robustness. The BICS is compatible with Very-Low-Cost Automatic Test Equipment (VLC-ATE), and can be used for detailed parametric testing in the production environment.     

Liquid Metal Based Island‐Bridge Architectures for All Printed Stretchable Electrochemical Devices

The adoption of epidermal electronics into everyday life requires new design and fabrication paradigms, transitioning away from traditional rigid, bulky electronics towards soft devices that adapt with high intimacy to the human body. Here, a new strategy is reported for fabricating achieving highly stretchable “island‐bridge” (IB) electrochemical devices based on thick‐film printing process involving merging the deterministic IB architecture with stress‐enduring composite silver (Ag) inks based on eutectic gallium‐indium particles (EGaInPs) as dynamic electrical anchors within the inside the percolated network. The fabrication of free‐standing soft Ag‐EGaInPs‐based serpentine “bridges” enables the printed microstructures to maintain mechanical and electrical properties under an extreme (≈800%) strain. Coupling these highly stretchable “bridges” with rigid multifunctional “island” electrodes allows the realization of electrochemical devices that can sustain high mechanical deformation while displaying an extremely attractive and stable electrochemical performance. The advantages and practical utility of the new printed Ag‐liquid metal‐based island‐bridge designs are discussed and illustrated using a wearable biofuel cell. Such new scalable and tunable fabrication strategy will allow to incorporate a wide range of materials into a single device towards a wide range of applications in wearable electronics.     

A multiobjective design of a patient and anaesthetist-friendly neuromuscular blockade controller

During surgeries (especially in long ones), patients are subject to a substantial amount of drug dosage necessary to achieve the required neuromuscular blockade level. This paper aims at the development of a fuzzy controller that satisfies two important goals: 1) an optimization of the amount of drug (atracurium) required to induce an adequate level of relaxation and 2) a concomitant ability to explain the undertaken control decision at the level of natural language. For instance, statements of the form "Since the difference between the target and the current blockade level is near zero, a small quantity of drug infusion is currently being applied", where "near zero" and "small" are linguistic terms that are represented as fuzzy sets. In this sense, we can regard this controller as a construct that is human friendly and highly interpretable (transparent). To address the two objectives outlined above, we consider the use of a multiobjective evolutionary optimization. How the quality of the control action and the controller interpretability are formalized and captured in this optimization framework is presented. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through a comprehensive suite of experiments involving 100 simulated patients (used for training) and 500 patients (forming the test set), validating the approach for application in the operating theater.     

Socially-Aware Multimedia Dissemination in Personal Mobile Networks

Wireless Personal Communications - Mobile multimedia entertainment is pervasive on mobile devices, leading people to access, store and disseminate a diversity of multimedia contents anytime and...     

Au@Hg Nanoalloy Formation Through Direct Amalgamation: Structural,Spectroscopic, and Computational Evidence for Slow Nanoscale Diffusion

Dynamic core–shell nanoparticles have received increasing attention in recent years. This paper presents a detailed study of Au–Hg nanoalloys, whose composing elements show a large difference in cohesive energy. A simple method to prepare Au@Hg particles with precise control over the composition up to 15 atom% mercury is introduced, based on reacting a citrate stabilized gold sol with elemental mercury. Transmission electron microscopy shows an increase of particle size with increasing mercury content and, together with X‐ray powder diffraction, points towards the presence of a core–shell structure with a gold core surrounded by an Au–Hg solid solution layer. The amalgamation process is described by pseudo‐zero‐order reaction kinetics, which indicates slow dissolution of mercury in water as the rate determining step, followed by fast scavenging by nanoparticles in solution. Once adsorbed at the surface, slow diffusion of Hg into the particle lattice occurs, to a depth of ca. 3 nm, independent of Hg concentration. Discrete dipole approximation calculations relate the UV–vis spectra to the microscopic details of the nanoalloy structure. Segregation energies and metal distribution in the nanoalloys were modeled by density functional theory calculations. The results indicate slow metal interdiffusion at the nanoscale, which has important implications for synthetic methods aimed at core–shell particles.