Significance tests and deduction: Reply to Folger (1989).

Shows that agreeing with R. Folger's (1989) methodological observations does not mean that it is incorrect to use significance tests. This contention is based on the dynamics of theory corroboration, with reference to which the following distinctions are illustrated, namely, the distinctions between (a) statistical hypothesis testing, theory corroboration, and syllogistic argument, (b) a responsible experimenter and a cynical experimenter, (c) logical validity and methodological correctness, and (d) warranted assertability and truth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Vector data flow analysis for SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs

Multi‐core systems equipped with micro processing units and accelerators such as digital signal processors (DSPs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) have become a major trend in processor design in recent years in attempts to meet ever‐increasing application performance requirements. Open Computing Language (OpenCL) is one of the programming languages that include new extensions proposed to exploit the computing power of these kinds of processors. Among the newly extended language features, the single‐instruction multiple‐data (SIMD) linguistics and vector types are added to OpenCL to exploit hardware features of the accelerators. The addition makes it necessary to consider how traditional compiler data flow analysis can be adopted to meet the optimization requirements of vector linguistics. In this paper, we propose a calculus framework to support the data flow analysis of vector constructs for OpenCL programs that compilers can use to perform SIMD optimizations. We model OpenCL vector operations as data access functions in the style of mathematical functions. We then show that the data flow analysis for OpenCL vector linguistics can be performed based on the data access functions. Based on the information gathered from data flow analysis, we illustrate a set of SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs. The experimental results incorporating our calculus and our proposed compiler optimizations show that the proposed SIMD optimizations can provide average performance improvements of 22% on x86 CPUs and 4% on advanced micro devices GPUs. For the selected 15 benchmarks, 11 of them are improved on x86 CPUs, and six of them are improved on advanced micro devices GPUs. The proposed framework has the potential to be used to construct other SIMD optimizations on OpenCL programs. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Morphology,Electrical, and Rheological Properties of Silane‐Modified Silver Nanowire/Polymer Composites

Electrically conducting films containing AgNws, hydrophilic and hydrophobic resins were prepared. FT‐IR reveals that the interface between the AgNws and epoxy could be successfully modified by APTES. XPS shows that the AgNws were attracted by hydrogen bonds of ? NH₂ and ? NH? groups after APTES modification. SEM analysis shows that the AgNws were well dispersed in the resin. The AgNws were also blended with hydrophilic and acrylic resins, and the resulting blends were compared with AgNws/epoxy blends. Results show that AgNw/PVA‐resin films possess the lowest surface electrical resistance. The AgNw/PVA‐resin and silane‐modified AgNw/epoxy resin conductive films possess a similar electrical percolation threshold.

     

Determination of nitrite and nitrate levels in meat and vegetable products by high performance liquid chromatography

A range of fresh and processed meat and vegetable products was analysed by h.p.l.c. for nitrite and nitrate contents. Satisfactory results were obtained for vegetable products and most meats, but some meat products were subject to matrix interference. Sucrose, sulphate and phosphate did not affect results. Added sodium chloride decreased retention time of nitrite and increased apparent levels of both nitrite and nitrate. Ascorbic and erythorbic acids decreased apparent nitrite levels and correspondingly increased apparent nitrate levels.     

An uncertainty importance measure using a distance metric for the change in a cumulative distribution function

A simple measure of uncertainty importance using the entire change of cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) has been developed for use in probability safety assessments (PSAs). The entire change of CDFs is quantified in terms of the metric distance between two CDFs. The metric distance measure developed in this study reflects the relative impact of distributional changes of inputs on the change of an output distribution, while most of the existing uncertainty importance measures reflect the magnitude of relative contribution of input uncertainties to the output uncertainty. The present measure has been evaluated analytically for various analytical distributions to examine its characteristics. To illustrate the applicability and strength of the present measure, two examples are provided. The first example is an application of the present measure to a typical problem of a system fault tree analysis and the second one is for a hypothetical non-linear model. Comparisons of the present result with those obtained by existing uncertainty importance measures show that the metric distance measure is a useful tool to express the measure of uncertainty importance in terms of the relative impact of distributional changes of inputs on the change of an output distribution.     

Off-state drain breakdown mechanisms of VDMOS with anti-JFET implantation

Efficiency, reliability, and cost are the important design considerations of a vertical double diffused MOSFET (VDMOS) because of its high-voltage applications in consumer electronics. To minimize the cost, the devices were normally fabricated on an epitaxial layer which was grown on a highly-doped substrate. Meanwhile, it was proposed that the efficiency of a VDMOS can be enhanced by conducting an anti-JFET implant to reduce the “ON” resistance of the transistor. This paper reports the effects of anti-JFET implant on the reliability and the blocking capability of the VDMOS. Experimental results show that the anti-JFET implant can reduce the ON resistance by suppressing the channel depletion due to the parasitic JFET and enhance the breakdown voltage by moving the high-field region to the surface channel region. However, it deteriorates the device reliability greatly because the oxide quality was deteriorated and the hot holes generated in the surface high-field region could be easily injected into the gate oxide and hence caused larger subthreshold conduction and drain breakdown at lower voltage.     

Filtering a Markov Modulated Random Measure

We develop a new exact filter when a hidden Markov chain influences both the sizes and times of a marked point process. An example would be an insurance claims process, where we assume that both the stochastic intensity of the claim arrivals and the distribution of the claim sizes depend on the states of an economy. We also develop the robust filter-based and smoother-based EM algorithms for the on-line recursive estimates of the unknown parameters in the Markov-modulated random measure. Our development is in the framework of modern theory of stochastic processes.      

Error-rate analysis for multirate DS-CDMA transmission schemes

We analyze and compare the error performance of a dual-rate direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system using multicode (MCD) and variable-spreading gain (VSG) transmission in the uplink. Specifically, we present two sets of results. First, we consider an ideal additive white Gaussian noise channel. We show that the bit-error rate (BER) of VSG users is slightly lower than that of MCD users if the number of low-rate interferers is smaller than a specific threshold. Otherwise, they exhibit similar error performance. Second, we look at multipath fading channels. We show that with diversity RAKE reception, the VSG user suffers from a larger interference power than the MCD user if the channel delay spread is small. The reverse is true for a large delay spread. However, a larger interference power in this case does not necessarily lead to higher error probability. Essentially, our results for both cases show that: 1) in addition to the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), the difference in error performance between the two systems strongly depends on the distributions of multiple-access and multipath interference; 2) for practical cellular communications, performances for both systems are expected to be similar most of the time.