Ultralow Expansion Glass as Material for Advanced Micromechanical Systems

Ultralow expansion (ULE) glasses are of special interest for temperature stabilized systems for example in precision metrology. Nowadays, ULE materials are mainly used in macroscopic and less in micromechanical systems. Reasons for this are a lack of technologies for parallel fabricating high-quality released microstructures with a high accuracy. As a result, there is a high demand in transferring these materials into miniaturized application examples, realistic system modeling, and the investigation of microscopic material properties. Herein, a technological base for fabricating released micromechanical structures and systems with a structure height above 100 μm in ULE 7972 glass is established. Herein, the main fabrication parameters that are important for the system design and contribute thus to the introduction of titanium silicate as material for glass-based micromechanical systems are discussed. To study the mechanical properties in combination with respective simulation models, microcantilevers are used as basic mechanical elements to evaluate technological parameters and other impact factors. The implemented models allow to predict the micromechanical system properties with a deviation of only ±5% and can thus effectively support the micromechanical system design in an early stage of development.     

Significance of adrenal hormones in brain energy metabolism

Intensity of glycolysis was studied under conditions of immobilization stress and adrenalectomy as well as with administration of adrenaline and hydrocortisone. The processes of aerobic glycolysis, activity of enzymes of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and mitochondria respiratory chain, content of total, free and protein-bound glycogen, glucose-I-phosphate, glucose-6-phosphate, pyruvate, alpha-ketoglutarate, cytrate and macroergs in the brain are shown to depend on the level of adrenal hormones producing a multilateral effect on a series of energy metabolism links.     

Properties of Phenocarbon Plastics Based on UVIS Carbon Fabric

The physicomechanical and thermophysical properties of phenocarbon plastics based on UVIS carbon fabric were determined. It was found that use of UVIS carbon fabric ensures a high level of performance characteristics of the phenocarbon plastics. Phenocarbon plastics with a 60 wt. % degree of filling with 10 × 10 to 20 × 20 mm reinforcing elements have optimum strength and thermophysical properties with a random scheme of reinforcement. __________ Translated from Khimicheskie Volokna, No. 3, pp. 54–56, May–June, 2005.     

Resource pool management: Reactive versus proactive or let’s be friends

The consolidation of multiple workloads and servers enables the efficient use of server and power resources in shared resource pools. We employ a trace-based workload placement controller that uses historical information to periodically and proactively reassign workloads to servers subject to their quality of service objectives. A reactive migration controller is introduced that detects server overload and underload conditions. It initiates the migration of workloads when the demand for resources exceeds supply. Furthermore, it dynamically adds and removes servers to maintain a balance of supply and demand for capacity while minimizing power usage. A host load simulation environment is used to evaluate several different management policies for the controllers in a time effective manner. A case study involving three months of data for 138 SAP applications compares three integrated controller approaches with the use of each controller separately. The study considers trade-offs between: (i) required capacity and power usage, (ii) resource access quality of service for CPU and memory resources, and (iii) the number of migrations. Our study sheds light on the question of whether a reactive controller or proactive workload placement controller alone is adequate for resource pool management. The results show that the most tightly integrated controller approach offers the best results in terms of capacity and quality but requires more migrations per hour than the other strategies.     

What Is Perseverated in Schizophrenia? Evidence of Abnormal Response Plasticity in the Saccadic System.

Although perseveration is sometimes attributed to defective set switching, the authors have recently shown that set-switching is normal in schizophrenia. In this article, the authors tested for persistent states of the saccadic response system, rather than set perseveration. Schizophrenic and healthy subjects performed antisaccades and prosaccades. The authors analyzed for 3 carry-over effects. First, whereas the latency of the current saccade correlated with that of the prior saccade in both groups, the correlations under mixed-task conditions declined in healthy but not in schizophrenic subjects. Second, antisaccades in penultimate trials delayed upcoming saccades in schizophrenic but not in healthy subjects. Third, schizophrenic subjects were more likely to erroneously perseverate the direction of a prior antisaccade but not a prior prosaccade. The authors concluded that, in schizophrenia, the effects of correct antisaccades are persistent not weak. Saccades in schizophrenia are characterized by perseveration of antisaccade-induced changes in the saccadic response system rather than failures to switch task set. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of diet without added bran on the contents of corticosteroid hormones in adrenal gland and blood plasma of rats

The article is devoted to the influence of one-bran diet on functioning adrenal gland. There was investigated a level of corticosteroid and 11-dehydrocorticosterone in blood and adrenal gland rats and also aldosterone and desoxycorticosterone in adrenal gland. The consumption of one-bran diet results in increase of a corticosterone level in blood and contents of 11-dehydrocorticosterone in adrenal gland and thus is a stressful factor. The transition of animals on to a vivarium standard diet does not remove this condition completely.     

The mechanism of the inhibiting effect of a Yersinia pestis protein factor on the hormone-stimulated response of human thrombocytes

Thermostable protein factor (20000 Da) was prepared from Yersinia pestis avirulent strain EV 1290. This protein inhibited the aggregation of human platelets as well as elevation of [Ca2+], induced by different agonist. The action of this protein on platelets is accompanied by elevation of cellular cGMP levels. This factor activated guanylate cyclase suspension of human platelets. The data indicate that this protein factor of Y. pestis may possibly release in circulation during decay of bacteria and can change the physiological activity of human blood cells and contribute to the pathogenesis of plague.