Hybrid algorithms for complete exchange in 2D meshes

Parallel algorithms for several common problems such as sorting and the FFT involve a personalized exchange of data among all the processors. Past approaches to doing complete exchange have taken one of two broad approaches: direct exchange or the indirect message-combining approaches. While combining approaches reduce the number of message startups, direct exchange minimizes the volume of data transmitted. This paper presents a family of hybrid algorithms for wormhole-routed 2D meshes that can effectively utilize the complementary strengths of these two approaches to complete exchange. The performance of hybrid algorithms using Cyclic Exchange and Scott's Direct Exchange are studied using analytical models, simulation, and implementation on a Cray T3D system. The results show that hybrids achieve lower completion times than either pure algorithm for a range of mesh sizes, data block sizes, and message startup costs. It is also demonstrated that barriers may be used to enhance performance by reducing message contention, whether or not the target system provides hardware support for barrier synchronization. The analytical models are shown useful in selecting the optimum hybrid for any given combination of system parameters (mesh size, message startup time, flit transfer time, and barrier cost) and the problem parameter (data block size)     

On model reduction by modified Cauer form

A simple algorithm for obtaining the continued fraction quotients in the modified Cauer form (MCF) from the given system matrices in companion form is presented. In the sequel, the triple of all lower order models in companion form is directly obtained. A matrix method of obtaining the time-moments and Markov parameters from the MCF quotients is also outlined. Finally, it is shown that system reduction by matching a set of MCF quotients is equivalent to system reduction by matching a set of time-moments and Markov parameters.     

Phosphoproteomic Analysis of Subcutaneous and Omental Adipose Tissue Reveals Increased Lipid Turnover in Dairy Cows Supplemented with Conjugated Linoleic Acid

Phosphoproteomics is a cutting-edge technique that can be utilized to explore adipose tissue (AT) metabolism by quantifying the repertoire of phospho-peptides (PP) in AT. Dairy cows were supplemented with conjugated linoleic acid (CLA, n = 5) or a control diet (CON, n = 5) from 63 d prepartum to 63 d postpartum; cows were slaughtered at 63 d postpartum and AT was collected. We performed a quantitative phosphoproteomics analysis of subcutaneous (SC) and omental (OM) AT using nanoUPLC-MS/MS and examined the effects of CLA supplementation on the change in the phosphoproteome. A total of 5919 PP were detected in AT, and the abundance of 854 (14.4%) were differential between CON and CLA AT (p ≤ 0.05 and fold change ± 1.5). The abundance of 470 PP (7.9%) differed between OM and SC AT, and the interaction treatment vs. AT depot was significant for 205 PP (3.5% of total PP). The integrated phosphoproteome demonstrated the up- and downregulation of PP from proteins related to lipolysis and lipogenesis, and phosphorylation events in multiple pathways, including the regulation of lipolysis in adipocytes, mTOR signaling, insulin signaling, AMPK signaling, and glycolysis. The differential regulation of phosphosite on a serine residue (S777) of fatty acid synthase (FASN) in AT of CLA-supplemented cows was related to lipogenesis and with more phosphorylation sites compared to acetyl-coenzyme A synthetase (ACSS2). Increased protein phosphorylation was seen in acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1 (ACACA;8 PP), FASN (9 PP), hormone sensitive lipase (LIPE;6 PP), perilipin (PLIN;3 PP), and diacylglycerol lipase alpha (DAGLA;1 PP) in CLA vs. CON AT. The relative gene expression in the SC and OM AT revealed an increase in LIPE and FASN in CLA compared to CON AT. In addition, the expression of DAGLA, which is a lipid metabolism enzyme related to the endocannabinoid system, was 1.6-fold higher in CLA vs. CON AT, and the expression of the cannabinoid receptor CNR1 was reduced in CLA vs. CON AT. Immunoblots of SC and OM AT showed an increased abundance of FASN and a lower abundance of CB1 in CLA vs. CON. This study presents a complete map of the SC and the OM AT phosphoproteome in dairy cows following CLA supplementation and discloses many unknown phosphorylation sites, suggestive of increased lipid turnover in AT, for further functional investigation.     

Interpolation of erasure bursts via cosine-modulated filterbanks

A novel and low-complexity approach for reconstructing periodic erasure bursts in data sampled at greater than the Nyquist rate, using cosine modulated filterbanks, is described. In the case of interpolation of erasure singlets or doublets periodically repeated over 2M samples, the cosine modulated filterbank approach is shown to have a lower complexity (for a given restoration error) than a standard FIR interpolator. In the case of erasure triplets or quadruplets, periodically repeated over 2M samples, the restoration error is primarily related to whether theM-channel filterbank’s stopband suppression is better than the condition number of a 2 × 2 matrix, whereM is determined by the oversampling factor of the data. While the method used for erasure triplets and quadruplets extends to arbitrary erasure bursts, the condition numbers of the associated (larger dimension) matrices deteriorate rapidly with the increase in erasure length, posing practical problems such as the design of very high-attenuation filterbanks and large required implementation wordlengths.     

Crosslinked chitosan membranes: characterization and study of dimethylhydrazine dehydration by pervaporation

Crosslinked chitosan membranes were synthesized using glutaraldehyde and characterized by infra‐red (IR) and wide‐angle X‐ray diffraction (WAXD) spectroscopic methods. The membranes were applied for the pervaporation‐based dehydration of the highly hazardous and hypergolic unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine liquid propellant. The characterization techniques were an efficient tool in identifying polymer–liquid interaction sites and the separation mechanisms involved. The crosslinked polymer was found to have good potential for the separation of the aqueous azeotrope of the propellant (20 wt%) and its enrichment to >90% purity. An equilibrium sorption study examined the preferential affinity of the membrane amongst the two penetrating liquids. The pervaporation performance of the membrane was evaluated by varying the experimental parameters of feed composition, membrane thickness and permeate pressure, and found to be promising. © 2001 Society of Chemical Industry     

Coherent Spin Transport and Suppression of Spin Relaxation in InSb Nanowires with Single Subband Occupancy at Room Temperature

A longstanding goal of spintronics is to inject, then coherently transport, and finally detect electron spins in a semiconductor nanowire in which a single quantized subband is occupied by the electrons at room temperature. Here, the achieving of this goal in electrochemically self‐assembled 50‐nm diameter InSb nanowires is reported and substantiated by demonstrating both the spin‐valve effect and the Hanle effect. Observing both effects in the same sample allows one to estimate the electron mobility and the spin relaxation time in the nanowires. It is found that despite four orders of magnitude degradation in the mobility compared to bulk or quantum wells and a resulting four orders of magnitude increase in the Elliott‐Yafet spin relaxation rate, the spin relaxation time in the nanowires is still about an order of magnitude longer than what has been reported in bulk and quantum wells. This is caused by the elimination or suppression of the D’yakonov‐Perel’ spin relaxation through single subband occupancy. These experiments shed light on the nature of spin transport in a true quantum wire and raise hopes for the realization of a room‐temperature Datta‐Das spin transistor, where single subband occupancy is critical for optimum performance.     

Pseudo-QMF banks with near-equiripple performance

A novel method using the Parks-McClellan equiripple design procedure obtains a linear-phase spectral factor of an equiripple approximate 2Mth-band lowpass filter. This filter, which is an equiripple prototype of an M-channel pseudo-QMF bank, is modified to make it a closer approximation of a linear-phase spectral-factor of a 2Mth-band filter, reducing the maximum overall reconstruction error to the order of the stopband ripple, while slightly compromising equiripple performance     

Photoaffinity Labeling and Mutational Analysis of 24-C-Sterol Methyltransferase Defines the AdoMet Binding Site

Photolabeling and site-directed mutagenesis were performed on recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae 24-C-sterol methyltransferase (SMT) to elucidate the location and role of active site residues involved in AdoMet binding and catalysis. Bioinformatic analysis of the SMT revealed a ten amino acid segment, conserved between L124 and P133, associated with the Rossmann-like fold belonging to AdoMet-dependent methyltransferases. Irradiation of the SMT in the presence of [methyl-(3)H(3)]AdoMet directly photolabeled the protein. The specificity of photolabeling was demonstrated by inactivation experiments with structural analogs of AdoMet, including sinefungin. Trypsin digestion of the [methyl-(3)H(3)]AdoMet photolabeled Erg6p afforded a single radioactive band in SDS-PAGE gel of 4 kDa. HPLC purification of this material generated a single radioactive fraction. The corresponding (3)H-AdoMet-peptide adduct was subjected to Edman sequencing and the first fifteen residues gave a sequence Gly(120)-Asp-Leu-Val-Leu-Asp-Val-Gly-Cys-Gly-Val-Gly-Gly-Pro-Ala(134) that contained the predicted AdoMet binding site. Amino acid residues in the tryptic digest fragment considered to bind covalently with the AdoMet at Asp125, Cys128, Pro133 and Tyr153 were replaced with leucine and analyzed kinetically and by photolabeling inactivation experiments. The results indicate that one or both of Cys128 and Pro133 are covalently bound to AdoMet.     

Fault tolerance in multisensor networks

Replicating sensors is desirable, not only to tolerate sensor failures, but to increase the average accuracy of the ensemble of replicated sensors beyond that obtainable with a single sensor. Such replication is used in a multi-sensor environment or in a distributed-sensor network. Following Marzullo (1990), the authors have modeled a continuous valued sensor as an interval of real numbers containing the physical value of interest. Given n sensors of which at most f can suffer arbitrary failures, this paper presents an efficient O(n·log(n)) fault-tolerant algorithm (J/FTA) whose output is reliable (guaranteed to contain the correct value at all times) and is fairly accurate when f1/₂(n+1)). The output of J/FTA can be either a single-interval or a set-of-intervals, depending on the nature of the multi-sensor environment. J/FTA can be used not only to detect all possibly-faulty sensors but to detect all sets (combinations) of possibly-faulty sensors. This paper proves the following results pertaining to the possibly-faulty sensors identified by J/FTA: the number of sets each containing f possibly-faulty sensors is at most (f+1); the number of sets each containing f or fewer faulty sensors is at most (2f+1); and the number of possibly-faulty sensors identified by J/FTA is at most 2f. These results help to: narrow the search to detect faulty sensors; bound the number of intervals needed to construct an accurate and reliable abstract sensor; and identify at least one correct sensor     

A systematic review of Gymnema sylvestre in obesity and diabetes management

The prevalence of obesity is associated with many health‐related problems. Currently, more than 300 million people are considered to be obese. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2030, 87 and 439 million people will be affected in India and the world, respectively. Today, herbal medicines are gaining interest in the treatment of obesity and diabetes, because of their minimal side effects. Gymnemic acid – an active component isolated from Gymnema sylvestre – has anti‐obesity and antidiabetic properties, decreases body weight and also inhibits glucose absorption. Several components extracted from Gymnema prevent the accumulation of triglycerides in muscle and liver, and also decrease fatty acid accumulation in the circulation. In this paper, an attempt has been made to review the effects of various extracts from Gymnema sylvestre in the regulation of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism in both animal and clinical studies. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry