Work-site smoking policies: their population impact in Washington State

This article presents data from a population-based, random-digit dialing telephone survey of 1228 employed adults in Washington State, conducted 1989 through 1990. Eighty-one percent of men and 91% of women reported work-site smoking restrictions. Employees in work sites with no-smoking policies were less likely to be current smokers; men in work sites with policies restricting smoking smoked fewer cigarettes on both workdays and nonworkdays. Forty-eight percent of male and 53% of female smokers reported reduced smoking as a result of work-site policy. Work-site smoking policies, intended to protect against smoke exposure, may also reduce employee smoking.     

Synthesis and Physical Properties of Mn Doped ZnO Dilute Magnetic Semiconductor Nanostructures

Mn doped ZnO nanostructures have been prepared using low temperature simple, quick, and versatile synthesis approach. The structural, microstructural, and vibrational investigations reveal that as prepared nanostructures with low Mn doping concentration have single hexagonal phase and are grown along the preferred c-axis. The X-rays photoelectron spectroscopy demonstrates that the Mn ions are in mixed oxidation states for high doping concentration of Mn, while are in 2+ oxidation state for low concentration into ZnO lattice. The photoluminescence spectrum (PL) exhibits a significant red-shift of 22 nm in the optical band gap of doped ZnO and shows the improved luminescence properties, which makes it potential for its use in the photocatalyst, optoelectronics and solar cell nanodevices. Furthermore, the magnetic measurement of Mn doped ZnO nanostructures exhibits the ferromagnetism at room temperature.     

The effect of some alloying elements on the corrosion resistance of lead-antimony alloys — II. Silver

The effect of Ag on the stationary and non-stationary anodic corrosion rates of PbSbCd and PbSb alloys in H₂SO₄ has been studied. Anodic polarization curves were constructed under galvanostatic and potentiostatic conditions. Optical microscopic examination and microprobe analysis of the alloys were conducted. The beneficial effect of Ag was ascribed to a delay in closure of pores in the initial PbSO₄ film. The leaching out of Sb from the outermost layers and the simultaneous nucleation of PbSO₄ and Ag₂SO₄ from supersaturated solutions in the pores is thus made possible.     

ZnO growth on Si with low-temperature CdO and ZnO buffer layers by molecular-beam epitaxy

Low-temperature (LT) buffer-layer techniques were employed to improve the crystalline quality of ZnO films grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). Photoluminescence (PL) spectra show that CdO, as a hetero-buffer layer with a rock-salt structure, does not improve the quality of ZnO film grown on top. However, by using ZnO as a homo-buffer layer, the crystalline quality can be greatly enhanced, as indicated by PL, atomic force microscopy (AFM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), and Raman scattering. Moreover, the buffer layer grown at 450°C is found to be the best template to further improve the quality of top ZnO film. The mechanisms behind this result are the strong interactions between point defects and threading dislocations in the ZnO buffer layer.     

Path diversification for future internet end-to-end resilience and survivability

Path Diversification is a new mechanism that can be used to select multiple paths between a given ingress and egress node pair using a quantified diversity measure to achieve maximum flow reliability. The path diversification mechanism is targeted at the end-to-end layer, but can be applied at any level for which a path discovery service is available. Path diversification also takes into account service requirements for low-latency or maximal reliability in selecting appropriate paths. Using this mechanism will allow future internetworking architectures to exploit naturally rich physical topologies to a far greater extent than is possible with shortest-path routing or equal-cost load balancing. We describe the path diversity metric and its application at various aggregation levels, and apply the path diversification process to 13 real-world network graphs as well as 4 synthetic topologies to asses the gain in flow reliability. Based on the analysis of flow reliability across a range of networks, we then extend our path diversity metric to create a composite compensated total graph diversity metric that is representative of a particular topology’s survivability with respect to distributed simultaneous link and node failures. We tune the accuracy of this metric having simulated the performance of each topology under a range of failure severities, and present the results. The topologies used are from national-scale backbone networks with a variety of characteristics, which we characterize using standard graph-theoretic metrics. The end result is a compensated total graph diversity metric that accurately predicts the survivability of a given network topology.     

Interconnecting networks with optimized service provisioning

Telecommunication Systems - A recent trend of peering at geo-diversified Internet exchange points (IXPs) has empowered decades-old proposal of inter-networking and opened up new avenues of business...     

An AWG based colorless WDM-PON with RZ-DPSK modulated downstream and re-modulation of DL signal for OOK upstream

We proposed an arrayed waveguide granting (AWG) based 10 Gbps full duplex wavelength division multiplexing passive optical network (WDM-PON) utilizing a retum-to-zero differential phase shift keying (R...     

Enhancing inter-PMIPv6-domain for superior handover performance across IP-based wireless domain networks

As a network-based localized mobility management protocol, Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) enables a Mobile Host (MH) to roam within a localized domain without MH intervention in the mobility-related signalling. However, the PMIPv6 maintains MH mobility support in a restriction domain. Therefore, whenever the MH roams away from the PMIPv6 domain, its reachability status will be broken-down causing high handover latency and inevitable traffic loss for its communication session. This article proposes a proactive mechanism to mange the MH handover and maintain its data session continually across inter-PMIPv6-domains. The proposed mechanism introduces an intermediate global mobility anchor entity, called, which is responsible to coordinate MH handover as well as redirect its traffic across inter-PMIPv6-domains. Through various simulation evaluations, via ns-2, several experiments were conducted, revealing numerous results that verify the proposed mechanism superior performance over the conventional inter-PMIPv6-domain handover schemes in terms of handover latency, achieved throughput, protocol signalling cost and end-to-end traffic delivery latency.     

Effective Traffic Grooming Algorithms in SONET/WDM Ring Networks

Much work has focused on traffic grooming in SONET/WDM ring networks. Previous work has considered many aspects of traffic grooming, including minimizing the number of ADMs, minimizing the number of wavelengths, considering different traffic models, using different network architectures, incorporating switching capability and so on. In this work, we study traffic grooming in unidirectional ring networks with no switching capability under both uniform traffic and non-uniform traffic models to reduce electronic multiplexing costs. Based on the clustering notion, we derive a general and tighter lower bound for the number of ADMs required in traffic grooming under the uniform all-to-all traffic model. This bound reduces to special cases obtained in previous work. We also derive general, tighter, and closed form lower bounds for the number of ADMs required under two non-uniform traffic models: the distance-dependent traffic model and the non-uniform symmetric traffic model. Cost-effective multi-phase algorithms that exploit traffic characteristics are then designed and studied to efficiently groom traffic streams under different traffic models. Our numerical and simulation results show that the proposed multi-phase algorithms outperform existing traffic grooming algorithms by using a fewer number of ADMs. Our algorithms in several cases also achieve the lower bounds derived.     

Potential interference and rain attenuation at 21.4–22 GHz downlink broadcasting satellite signals

World Radio Conference WRC-1992 has allocated the frequency band 21.4–22.0?GHz to regions 1 and 3 to be utilised to carry direct broadcasting satellite (DBS) services. This high-frequency band is more susceptible to rain attenuation, leading to degradation of the signal quality. Moreover, this frequency band is assigned to two different services, i.e. satellite broadcasting and fixed mobile services at the same regions; hence, the impact of intersystem interference in a depredated signal is a critical issue in the DBS receiver. In this study, the effects of rain attenuation on the DBS downlink signals as well as the impact of the potential interference on the reception quality will be estimated. An interference scenario will be introduced to investigate the system performance in both propagation mechanisms of clear-sky and rain conditions.