An energy-efficient cloud system with novel dynamic resource allocation methods

The Journal of Supercomputing - In the last decade, cloud computing has brought enormous changes to people’s lives. Cloud computing gives a client-driven computational model. In this case,...     

High slew-rate CMOS operational amplifier

A 0.8 /spl mu/m CMOS operational amplifier configuration with a slew rate in excess of 2 V/ns and a unity gain bandwidth of 55 MHz with a load capacitance of 15 pF is proposed. This employs a dynamic technique that turns on a large current source when the rate of change of input is larger than a pre-decided value.     

Control of polishing of diamond films using microactuation and an atmospheric pressure plasma

In this work, the diamond deposited by hot filament chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is polished using an atmospheric pressure plasma. In order to position the film relative to the plasma, a microactuator system is designed using a stack of domed piezoelectric actuators. A dynamic model based on the physical system is developed and the model parameters are measured experimentally. A system based on laser triangulation is used to measure the position of the diamond film relative to the plasma. Control techniques are used to reduce the oscillations during actuation and to eliminate the steady state positioning error. With the application of feedback control, the overshoot is reduced to 2% and the settling time is reduced to 0.3 s. A preliminary set of experiments is performed to relate process parameters to the final surface roughness of the diamond film. The parameters studied include the film's time of exposure to the plasma, the height of the film relative to the plasma, and the distance from the film to the center of the plasma. It is found that the optimum exposure time is 15 min and the reduction of surface roughness is greatest when the distance between the film and the plasma is at a minimum. The best results are obtained when the top of the film is even in elevation with the tip of the top electrode. The diamond film is translated laterally along the plasma. When feedback control is not used, there is no change in the surface roughness. With feedback control implemented, the surface roughness of the diamond film is reduced by 33%.     

A DNA-binding element for a steroid receptor-binding factor is flanked by dual nuclear matrix DNA attachment sites in the c-myc gene promoter

The receptor-binding factor (RBF) for the avian oviduct progesterone (Pg) receptor (PR) has previously been shown to be a unique 10-kDa nuclear matrix protein that generates high affinity PR-binding sites on avian DNA. This paper describes the use of Southwestern blot and DNA gel shift analyses with RBF protein to identify a minimal 54-base pair RBF-binding element in the matrix-associated region (MAR) of the Pg-regulated c-myc gene promoter. This element contains a 5'-GC-rich domain and a 3'-AT-rich domain, the latter of which has a homopurine/homopyrimidine structure. The gel shift assays required the generation of an RBF-maltose fusion protein (RBF-MBP), which specifically binds this element and is supershifted when the anti-RBF polyclonal antibody is added. Computer analysis of the full-length amino acid sequence for RBF predicts a DNA-binding motif involving a beta-sheet structure at the N-terminal domain. Southern blot analyses using nuclear matrix DNA suggests that there are dual MAR sites in the c-myc promoter, which flank an intervening domain containing the RBF element. The co-transfection of this MAR sequence, containing the RBF element and cloned into a luciferase reporter vector, together with an RBF expression vector construct, into steroid treated human MCF-7 cells, results in a decrease of the c-myc promoter activity relative to control transfections containing only the parent vector of the RBF expression construct. These data suggest that a unique chromatin/nuclear matrix structure, composed of the RBF-DNA element complex which is flanked by nuclear matrix attachment sites, serves to bind the PR and repress the c-myc promoter.     

Neuroanatomy in Rett syndrome: cerebral cortex and posterior fossa

Rett syndrome (RS), a neurodevelopmental disorder of unknown etiology occurring almost exclusively in females, is characterized by autistic-like behavior, motor dysfunction, loss of language skills, dementia, and microcephaly. This study is a follow-up and extension of a previously reported neuroimaging study of patients with RS. We replicated previously reported findings with a larger patient population, and the volumetric MRI analysis was extended to include an analysis of neuroanatomy of the posterior fossa. Twenty girls with RS were compared with individually age- and gender-matched normal controls. Patients with RS showed global reduction in gray- and white-matter volumes. The prefrontal, posterior-frontal, and anterior-temporal regions showed the largest bilateral decrease in gray-matter volume, whereas white-matter volume was uniformly reduced throughout the brain. We found confirmation for the preferential reduction in caudate nucleus volume. However, we observed no preferential reduction in midbrain volume despite a preferential reduction in the midsagittal area of this region. We also present an individual case comparison between monozygotic twins discordant for RS.     

Comprehensive performance modeling and analysis of multicasting in optical networks

Multicasting is becoming increasingly important in today's networks. In optical networks, optical splitters facilitate the multicasting of optical signals. By eliminating the transmission of redundant traffic over certain links, multicasting can improve network performance. However, in a wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) optical network, the lack of wavelength conversion necessitates the establishment of a single multicast circuit (light-tree) on a single wavelength. On the other hand, establishing several unicast connections (lightpaths) to satisfy a multicast request, while requiring more capacity, is less constrained in terms of wavelength assignment. The objective of the paper is to evaluate the tradeoff between capacity and wavelength continuity in the context of optical multicasting. To this end, we develop accurate analytical models with moderate complexity for computing the blocking probability of multicast requests realized using light-trees, lightpaths, and combinations of light-trees and lightpaths. Numerical results indicate that a suitable combination of light-trees and lightpaths performs best when no wavelength conversion is present.     

Oxidation of Silicon Carbide in Environments Containing Potassium Salt Vapor

At high temperatures in clean oxidizing environments, SiC forms a very protective SiO₂ film, but, in environments containing low levels of gaseous alkali salt contaminants or where condensed salts may deposit on the surface, the resistance of the film is significantly reduced. Oxidation kinetics of SiC were measured by continuous thermogravimetric analysis in a controlled environment containing CO₂, H₂O, and O₂ plus low levels of potassium-containing salts. Potassium was found to be incorporated into the SiO₂ scale and to significantly change its transport properties and its morphology. The rate of scale formation was found to increase directly in proportion to K in the scale. A change in mechanism was observed when water vapor was added to the reacting gas stream.     

Differential pixel-based low-power and high-speed implementation of DCT for on-board satellite image processing

Low-power and high-speed discrete cosine transform (DCT) implementation of the images captured by the satellites presents a hardware design problem. The cost of the DCT implementation is dominated by the complexity of the multiplication of input data (image) with the DCT matrix. The techniques for minimising the complexity of multiplication by employing a differential pixel method are presented. In the proposed method 8times8 blocks of input image matrix are considered, the difference between the adjacent pixels is calculated and those differential pixels are used in DCT transformation. Synthesis results on 0.18 mum CMOS technology show that the proposed method gives an average of 13.2% reduction in power consumption and 10.9% improvement in speed over the conventional method. The proposed method can also be combined with the common subexpression elimination method for further reduction.     

Investigation of rectangular solid-core photonic crystal fiber as temperature sensor

Microsystem Technologies - In this article, a rectangular solid-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed as temperature sensor. The air-holes of the PCF have been filled with Ethyl alcohol...     

Self-aligned fabrication of single crystal diamond gated field emitter array

This paper describes a self-aligned fabrication process for diamond gated field emitter array (FEA). Utilizing the non-conformal coverage sputtering conditions of silicon oxide, an interesting “sphere on cone” structure is formed on diamond nano tip array, which is the key point of gate hole opening process. This structure causes shadowing at certain regions of side-wall during Ti / Au gate metal deposition. Removal of “sphere” by wet etching leads to the successful fabrication of a single crystalline diamond gated FEA. Scanning electron microscope observations reveal the fabrication of a uniform emitter array with tip radius of curvature (20 nm) and gate hole (1.4 μm). We also confirmed that no noticeable physical damage exists on tip. In field emission characteristics of the fabricated single crystal diamond gated FEA, gate voltage control of field emission current is realized.