2.3–21 GHz broadband and high linearity distributed low noise amplifier

This paper focuses on the design of a 2.3–21 GHz Distributed Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) with low noise figure (NF), high gain (S₂₁), and high linearity (IIP3) for broadband applications. This distributed amplifier (DA) includes S/C/X/Ku/K-band, which makes it very suitable for heterodyne receivers. The proposed DA uses a 0.18 μm GaAs pHEMT process (OMMIC ED02AH) in cascade architecture with lines adaptation and equalization of phase velocity techniques, to absorb their parasitic capacitances into the gate and drain transmission lines in order to achieve wide bandwidth and to enhance gain and linearity. The proposed broadband DA achieved an excellent gain in the flatness of 13.5 ± 0.2 dB, a low noise figure of 3.44 ± 1.12 dB, and a small group delay variation of ±19.721 ps over the range of 2.3–21 GHz. The input and output reflection coefficients S₁₁ and S₂₂ are less than −10 dB. The input compression point (P_1dB) and input third-order intercept point (IIP3) are −1.5 dBm and 11.5 dBm, respectively at 13 GHz. The dissipated power is 282 mW and the core layout size is 2.2 × 0.8 mm².     

A Case Report of Germline Compound Heterozygous Mutations in the BRCA1 Gene of an Ovarian and Breast Cancer Patient

The germline carrier of the BRCA1 pathogenic mutation has been well proven to confer an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Despite BRCA1 biallelic pathogenic mutations being extremely rare, they have been reported to be embryonically lethal or to cause Fanconi anemia (FA). Here we describe a patient who was a 48-year-old female identified with biallelic pathogenic mutations of the BRCA1 gene, with no or very subtle FA-features. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and breast cancer at the ages of 43 and 44 and had a strong family history of breast and gynecological cancers.     

中医学视角下城市物质空间的生命要素探析

通过借鉴中医学整体观和生命观的相关理论,从认识城市有机体的生命属性入手,发现并提炼能够产生和传递城市运营所需各种能量的生命要素:廊道和功能体。阐释了其多层级、多性质和多形态的特点,提出了功能体有动力、廊道成系统、敏感点有活力的疏通策略,旨在促进城市各种能量的有机循环,从而维护城市的健康与安全,提高城市生活的效率与质量。     

Rethinking Enterprise Architecture for Sustainable Energy System Development

The development of a sustainable energy system throughout an enterprise is a complex task, which requires an agile holistic approach. Such an approach needs to include a variety of objectives including energy strategy formation and strategic decision-making, which are directly related to the analysis and management of the main areas of sustainable development:The economic, technological, environmental, and social. These multidimensional requirements of sustainability are often difficult to achieve within the enterprise, because these aspects are interrelated and influenced by various internal and external environment factors. This paper first reviews the main challenges for an energy system, and then demonstrates how a strategic agile enterprise architecture driven approach could effectively guide the sustainable energy system development. The study presented in this paper provides a holistic approach that contributes to the advancement and usage of literature dealing with issues of sustainable energy system development and agile enterprise architecture, which has not been discussed before to any great extent.     

Resistive switching characteristics of ZnO–graphene quantum dots and their use as an active component of an organic memory cell with one diode-one resistor architecture

We investigated the resistive switching characteristics of a polystyrene:ZnO–graphene quantum dots system and its potential application in a one diode-one resistor architecture of an organic memory cell. The log–log I–V plot and the temperature-variable I–V measurements revealed that the switching mechanism in a low-current state is closely related to thermally activated transport. The turn-on process was induced by a space-charge-limited current mechanism resulted from the ZnO–graphene quantum dots acting as charge trap sites, and charge transfer through filamentary path. The memory device with a diode presented a ∼10³ I_ON/I_OFF ratio, stable endurance cycles (10² cycles) and retention times (10⁴ s), and uniform cell-to-cell switching. The one diode-one resistor architecture can effectively reduce cross-talk issue and realize a cross bar array as large as ∼3 kbit in the readout margin estimation. Furthermore, a specific word was encoded using the standard ASCII character code.     

Combined hardware–software multi-parallel prefiltering on the Convey HC-1 for fast homology detection

Protein databases used in research are huge and still grow at a fast pace. Many comparisons need to be done when searching similar (homologous) sequences for a given query sequence in these databases. Comparing a query sequence against all sequences of a huge database using the well-known Smith–Waterman algorithm is very time-consuming. Hidden Markov Models pose an opportunity for reducing the number of entries of a database and also enable to find distantly homologous sequences. Fewer entries are achieved by clustering similar sequences in a Hidden Markov Model. Such an approach is used by the bioinformatics tool HHblits. To further reduce the runtime, HHblits uses two-level prefiltering to reduce the number of time-consuming Viterbi comparisons. Still, prefiltering is very time-consuming. Highly parallel architectures and huge bandwidth are required for processing and transferring the massive amounts of data. In this article, we present an approach exploiting the reconfigurable, hybrid computer architecture Convey HC-1 for migrating the most time-consuming part. The Convey HC-1 with four FPGAs and high memory bandwidth of up to 76.8 GB/s serves as the platform of choice. Other bioinformatics applications have already been successfully supported by the HC-1. Limited by FPGA size only, we present a design that calculates four first-level prefiltering scores per FPGA concurrently, i.e. 16 calculations in total. This score calculation for the query profile against database sequences is done by a modified Smith–Waterman scheme that is internally parallelized 128 times in contrast to the original Streaming ‘Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD)’ Extensions (SSE)-supported implementation where only 16-fold parallelism can be exploited and where memory bandwidth poses the limiting factor. Preloading the query profile, we are able to transform the memory-bound implementation to a compute- and resource-bound FPGA design. We tightly integrated the FPGA-based coprocessor into the hybrid computing system by employing task-parallelism for the two-level prefiltering. Despite much lower clock rates, the FPGAs outperform SSE-based execution for the calculation of the prefiltering scores by a factor of 7.9.     

Simplified anode architecture for PEMFC systems based on alternative fuel feeding: Experimental characterization and optimization for automotive applications

The need to reduce PEMFC systems cost as well as to increase their durability is crucial for their integration in various applications and especially for transport applications. A new simplified architecture of the anode circuit called Alternating Fuel Feeding (AFF) offers to reduce the development costs. Requiring a new stack concept, it combines the simplicity of Dead-End Anode (DEA) with the operation advantages of the hydrogen recirculation. The three architectures (DEA, recirculation and AFF) are compared in terms of performance on a 5-kW test bench in automotive conditions, through a sensitivity analysis. A gain of 17% on the system efficiency is observed when switching from DEA to AFF. Moreover, similar performances are obtained both for AFF and for recirculation after an accurate optimization of the AFF tuning parameters. Based on DoE data, a gain of 25% on the weight of the anodic line has been identified compared to pulsed ejector architecture and 43% with the classic recirculation architecture with blower only (Miraï).     

Indoor solid fuel use for heating and cooking with blood pressure and hypertension: A cross-sectional study among middle-aged and older adults in China

A cross-sectional study was conducted to investigate the impact of solid fuel use for heating and cooking on blood pressure (BP) and hypertension, using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The primary fuels used for indoor heating and cooking were collected by questionnaires, respectively. Hypertension was defined based on self-report of physician's diagnosis, and/or measured BP, and/or anti-hypertensive medication use. Multivariate logistic regression models were constructed to assess the associations. Among 10 450 eligible participants, 68.2% and 57.2% used indoor solid fuel for heating and cooking, respectively. Compared with none/clean fuel users, solid fuel for heating was associated with elevated BP (adjusted β: 2.02, 95% CI: 1.04–3.01 for systolic BP; adjusted β: 1.36, 95% CI: 0.78–1.94 for diastolic BP) and increased risk of hypertension (adjusted odds ratio: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.03–1.29). The impact of indoor solid fuel for heating on BP was more evident in rural and north residents, and hypertensive patients. We did not detect any significant associations between solid fuel use for cooking and BP/hypertension. Indoor solid fuel use is prevalent in China, especially in the rural areas. Its negative impact on BP suggested that modernization of household fuel use may help to reduce the burden of hypertension in China.     

M-estimator based Chinese Remainder Theorem with few remainders using a Kroenecker product based mapping vector

The Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) explains how to estimate an integer-valued number from the knowledge of the remainders obtained by dividing such unknown integer by co-prime integers. As an algebraic theorem, CRT is the basis for several techniques concerning data processing. For instance, considering a single-tone signal whose frequency value is above the sampling rate, the respective peak in the DFT informs the impinging frequency value modulo the sampling rate. CRT is nevertheless sensitive to errors in the remainders, and many efforts have been developed in order to improve its robustness. In this paper, we propose a technique to estimate real-valued numbers by means of CRT, employing for this goal a Kroenecker based M-Estimation (ME), specially suitable for CRT systems with low number of remainders. Since ME schemes are in general computationally expensive, we propose a mapping vector obtained via Kroenecker products which considerably reduces the computational complexity. Furthermore, our proposed technique enhances the probability of estimating an unknown number accurately even when the errors in the remainders surpass 1/4 of the greatest common divisor of all moduli. We also provide a version of the mapping vectors based on tensorial n-mode products, delivering in the end the same information of the original method. Our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art CRT methods not only in terms of percentage of successful estimations but also in terms of smaller average error.     

Precipitating spinel into precursor glass and its assistance in crystallization

The crystallization phenomena of spinel in CaO-MgO-Al₂O₃-SiO₂-Fe₂O₃ glass have received much attention due to the particular role in preparation of glass-ceramic materials, which represent an effective option to manage hazardous waste. In this study, both preliminary spinel and secondary spinel were precipitated in the precursor glass. The formation of these spinel was meticulously assessed by a combination of X-ray diffractometry and scanning electron microscopy. The structure of the microenvironment in the precursor glass was characterized by Raman spectrums. These advanced techniques highlight the potential for one-step crystallization of the glass. The investigation, which focused on one-step crystallization, demonstrated the growth of pyroxene on spinel accompanying a migration of chromium. The results also show the microstructure of the obtained glass-ceramic was very dependent on the heat-treat temperature. This study not only unambiguously reveals the precipitation mechanisms of spinel but also provides more documentation for one-step crystallization in the glass-ceramics field.