Quinoxaline-2-carboxylic acid in pigs: criteria to distinguish between the illegal use of carbadox and environmental contamination

Carbadox cannot be used in food-producing animals within the European Union following the adoption of Commission Regulation EC 2788/98/EC. Monitoring of the longest remaining residue—quinoxaline-2-carboxylic acid (QCA)—is the most effective way of enforcing the prohibition on its use. The study was under taken to determine if QCA could be passed from pig to pig following the exposure of unmedicated animals to housing that had previously contained medicated animals. Drug-withdrawal studies were also carried out on medicated animals. Distinction between treated animals and those exposed to QCA might be required by competent national authorities to determine whether a positive result for QCA in tissue is truly 'violative'. Comparison of the ratio concentrations of QCA in tissues and body fluids was made to determine if they could be used as criteria for discrimination between illegally treated animals and environmental contamination.     

Robust QCA full-adders using an efficient fault-tolerant five-input majority gate

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is considered as a top candidate for nanoscale technologies with unique features such as very low occupancy and ultralow power consumption. Despite the potential benefits of QCA technology over CMOS technology, QCA circuits are highly prone to defects. Therefore, a demand has risen in designing fault-tolerant circuits. In this research, a novel fault-tolerant five-input majority gate is first suggested, and then it is evaluated by implementing a variety of faults such as cell omission, cell displacement, and extra-cell deposition. The evaluation results reveal that the proposed structure is 100%, 51.85%, and 18.8% fault-tolerant under extra-cell deposition, single-cell omission, and double-cell omission, respectively. Moreover, two single-layer and coplanar fault-tolerant QCA full-adders are offered using the suggested fault-tolerant structure. The stability of the presented single-layer full-adder has also been investigated under single and double cell omission defects. The evaluation outcomes show that the suggested fault-tolerant single-layer full-adder has a high stability in Sum and C_out outputs compared with other full-adders. In order to validate the functionality of the suggested fault-tolerant five-input majority gate, a number of physical investigations are given. The QCADesigner 2.0.3 software has been used to evaluate the simulation results.     

QCA电路的缺陷研究

针对量子元胞自动机电路中出现的元胞移位等元胞缺陷,介绍了基于QCADesigner的元胞缺陷分析,得出了特定结构的容错范围。对于制造过程出现的单电子故障,分析了不同输入时单电子故障对传输线和反相器的影响。对于制造过程中出现的漂移电荷缺陷,分析了这些缺陷对传输线的影响。通过改变元胞与传输线之间的距离,研究了QCA传输线之间的串扰问题,得出了其容错范围。最后对RS触发器中出现的元胞缺陷采用测试序列进行了分析研究,从而为进一步研究QCA电路的缺陷提供了依据和方向。     

基于QCA可编程逻辑阵列单元的元胞缺陷研究

介绍了一种量子元胞自动机(QCA)可编程逻辑阵列结构,该结构可用于实现量子元胞自动机大规模可编程逻辑电路,采用QCADesigner仿真软件研究了元胞缺失、移位缺陷和未对准缺陷对可编程逻辑阵列单元逻辑功能的影响。得出了特定结构下,每个元胞移位缺陷和未对准缺陷的最大错位距离,以及导线模式中存在特定位置的8个可缺失元胞。这为缺陷单元的应用提供了一个具体的参数标准,提高了PLA阵列的单元利用率。     

Detecting Multiple Faults in One-Dimensional Arrays of Reversible QCA Gates

Reversible logic design is a well-known paradigm in digital computation. In this paper, quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is investigated for testable implementations of reversible logic in array systems. Testability of 1D arrays consisting of reversible QCA gates is investigated for multiple faulty modules. It has been shown that fault masking is possible in the presence of multiple faults without additional lines for controllability and observability. A technique for achieving C-testability of a 1D array is introduced by adding lines for observability. By adding lines for controllability, as well as observability, the array may be fully tested with a smaller number of test patterns. Different cases of arrays made of QCA reversible gates are presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed testing method.

基于量子细胞自动机的数值比较器设计

量子细胞自动机(QCA)可以构建逻辑门和QCA线。该文基于QCA设计了1位,4位和8位数值比较器,并用QCADesigner软件进行模拟。结果表明,所设计的电路具有正确的逻辑功能。通过对电路所需细胞数、面积和时延三方面性能分析,表明所设计的电路时延并不随输入位数呈线性增加,因而所设计的电路具有良好的时延性。     

Design of testable reversible latches by using a novel efficient implementation of Fredkin gate

ABSTRACT

Energy dissipation caused by information loss in irreversible computations will be an important limitation for the development of nano-scale circuits in the near future. Reductions in energy dissipation comprise one of the important goals of nanotechnology-based methods, including Quantum dot Cellular Automata (QCA), and so it is desirable to consider reversibility in the design of QCA circuits. In this research, a novel reversible Fredkin gate based on QCA is proposed, which is more efficient and less complex than the conventional Fredkin gate. Conservative reversible logic is parity preserving; hence, any permanent or transient fault can be caused a mismatch between the inputs and the outputs and can be concurrently detected if a reversible circuit is implemented with the conservative Fredkin gate. A single missing/additional cell defect is investigated in the proposed Fredkin gate and fault patterns are presented. To demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed design, some testable reversible sequential elements, such as D-latch, JK-latch, T-latch and SR-latch, are designed by using it. Our proposed concurrent testable designs greatly reduce the occupied area and maximise the circuit density in comparison with previously reported designs. The proposed designs are simulated and verified using QCA Designer ver.2.0.3 and HDLQ.     

基于量子元胞自动机的PLA故障分析和检测

量子元胞自动机(quantum-dot cellular automata,QCA)可编程逻辑阵列(programma-ble logic array,PLA)结构可用于实现大规模可编程逻辑电路。分析了4种故障类型发生在PLA单元的8个区域中的影响,得出了具体的影响效果。其中,直接或间接致使隐含线和与门发生逻辑错误的故障均会导致PLA中故障所在行整行失效,其他故障只会影响故障所在的PLA单元的逻辑功能和配置,而对PLA中的其他单元没有影响。此外,基于故障分析,提出了具体的PLA故障检测方法。     

QCA and the harnessing of unstructured qualitative data

This paper proposes qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a novel method to harness unstructured data sets such as publicly available reports and news articles. It shows how QCA and conventional qualitative IS research can complement each other. In particular, it demonstrates how qualitative IS research can combine typical qualitative coding techniques with a specific type of QCA, namely crisp‐set QCA (csQCA). The paper illustrates how QCA offers qualitative IS research an innovative approach to explicate the combination of conditions associated with particular outcomes. Drawing on an empirical study of green IS, it showcases the potential of QCA to harness large unstructured qualitative material and generate deeper insights about emerging IS phenomena. The paper also highlights how QCA can contribute to the data collection and analysis stages of qualitative IS research.     

Architecture for an external input into a molecular QCA circuit

A simple architecture for data input into a molecular quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) circuit from an external CMOS circuit is proposed. A “T”-shaped interconnect, utilizing fixed-polarization cells to provide the desired polarization, is controlled via external electrodes connected to a standard CMOS input driver. The applied input signal is used to gate either the propagation of a fixed polarization, P=+1, or that of the complementary fixed polarization, P=−1, into the QCA circuit. The architecture utilizes the field-driven clocking scheme proposed in recent literature to achieve transduction between applied input voltage and a molecular configuration. The system is modelled using the coherence vector formalism with a three-state basis and simulated using the QCADesigner simulation tool.