Smart power technologies are required to withstand high-electrostatic-discharge (ESD) robustness under both powered and unpowered conditions, particularly for automotive and aeronautic applications among many others. They are concurrently confronted to the challenges of high-temperature operation in order to reduce heat-sink-related costs. In this context, very compact high-robustness ESD prote…
1. Advancing the field of ecology relies on understanding generalities and developing theories based on empirical and functional relationships that integrate across organismal to global spatial scales and span temporal scales. Significant advances in predicting responses of ecological communities to globally extensive anthropogenic perturbations,for example, require understanding the role of …
Abstract—Low-temperature joining of semiconductor chips by sintering of silver paste is emerging as an alternative lead-free solution for die-attaching power electronic device, particularly for igh-temperature applications. However, migration of sintered nanosilver should be fully understood for reliability evaluation. In this paper, we reported our findings and possible mechanism on high-te…
Portable devices have been introduced to provide companion diagnostics in many applications such as personalized healthcare monitoring since several decades ago. Recently the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based microfluidic chip enables a cost effective platform for point of care diagnostics. In this paper, we present a systematic theoretical and experimental study of a novel fluidic circuit-base…
Cloud computing promises to provide on-demand computing, storage, and networking resources. However, most cloud providers simply offer virtual machines (VMs) without bandwidth and delay guarantees, which may hurt the performance of the deployed services. Recently, some proposals suggested remediating such limitation by offering virtual data centers (VDCs) instead of VMs only. However, they have…
Cloud computing is a recently developed new technology for complex systems with massive service sharing, which is different from the resource sharing of the grid computing systems. In a cloud environment, service requests from users go through numerous provider-specific steps from the instant it is submitted to when the requested service is fully delivered. Quality modeling and analysis of clou…
A novel linear phase programmable delay is being proposed and implemented in a 0.35 CMOS process. The delay line consists of cascaded cells, each of which delays the input signal by , where is the total line delay. The delay generated by each cell is programmable by changing a clock frequency and is also fully independent of the frequency of the input signal. The total delay hence depends only…
Double-sided insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) assemblies bonded by sintered nanosilver are fabricated in this paper. Die-shear tests reveal that the lowest bonding strength between the chip and the substrate of the assemblies is about 20 MPa. Furthermore, temperature cycling tests (−40 ◦C to 150 ◦C) indicate that the shear strength declines as the number of cycles increases. In a…
Human welder’s experiences and skills are critical for producing quality welds in manual gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) process. In this paper, a neuro-fuzzy-based human intelligence model is constructed and implemented as an intelligent controller in automated GTAW process to maintain a consistent desired full penetration. An innovative vision system is utilized to real-time measure the sp…
It is very crucial for the byproduct gas system in steel industry to perform an accurate and timely scheduling, which enables to reasonably utilize the energy resources and effectively reduce the production cost of enterprises. In this study, a novel datadriven-based dynamic scheduling thought is proposed for the realtime gas scheduling, in which a probability relationship described by a Bayesi…
The increasing pressure to meet demand are forcing semiconductor manufacturers to seek efficient scheduling methods. Lithography, with a limited number of expensive resources and the reentrant nature of the fabrication processes, is a major bottleneck. This paper presents a litho machine scheduling formulation for high-volume and low-variety manufacturing over a day, with novel modeling of res…
Based on test results and a procedure that can isolate threshold voltage degradation and mobility degradation from drain current degradation, we found that the log–log curves of mobility degradation show saturation with a change of slope from about 0.4 to smaller values at room temperature. Although both the mobility and threshold voltage degradations are more severe at 77 K than at 300 K fo…
The design of correctly implemented controls inmaterial handling systems (MHS) is time consuming and cumbersome. The developer has to deal with an ever increasing complexity and heterogeneity of MHS on the one hand, but also with short development cycles and high demands to MHS on the other hand. For baggage handling systems (BHS) at airports, the error-free implementation of routing strategie…
This paper presents a tool, LABEL, oriented to the teaching of parallel robotics. The application, organized as a set of tools developed using Easy Java Simulations, enables the study of the kinematics of parallel robotics. A set of classical parallel structures was implemented such that LABEL can solve the inverse and direct kinematic problem of 5R, 3RRR, and Delta robots. An intuitive graphic…
An interesting approach is proposed for investigating the thermal stress of AlGaAs/GaAs laser diode bars using infrared thermography.We obtained horizontal and perpendicular profiles of the working thermal stress through the active region in one emitter (emitter 5) at operating currents 0.5 and 1.0 A. The thermal stress at the center of emitter 5 is found to quickly rise to values 2.1 and 3.4 …
In human and robot collaborative hybrid assembly cell as we proposed, it is important to develop automatic subtask allocation strategy for human and robot in usage of their advantages. We introduce a folk-joint task model that describes the sequential and parallel features and logic restriction of human and robot collaboration appropriately. To preserve a cost-effectiveness level of task allo…
1. Managers in the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) are using reductions in the River’s water levels during summer to mimic historical water regimes and rehabilitate habitats for vegetation and other species. Concerns for the unintended effects of these actions on mussel populations threatened to halt these projects. 2. Our objective was to characterise the survival and movement of two mussel s…
1. In order to evaluate if marine protected areas (MPAs) can be expected to confer conservation benefits to large, mobile marine species it is important to assess their site fidelity and habitat ranging patterns. The flapper skate (Dipterus cf. intermedia) is a large, threatened elasmobranch for which MPAs are being considered on the west coast of Scotland. To inform MPA establishment, a multia…
A total of 255 longnosed skate Dipturus oxyrinchus caught in Sardinian waters (central-western Mediterranean Sea), was analysed with respect to fish total length (LT), season and depth, in order to provide information on diet and feeding behaviour. Specimens ranging from 93 to 1153mm LT, were collected at depths between 121 and 671 m, during experimental trawl surveys carried out from 2005 to 2…
This study examined the effects of organic enrichment on water column, sediments and macrofauna caused by a fish farm in the Mediterranean Sea. Samples were collected on four sampling campaigns over a one-year cycle. Significant differences were found in the water column in dissolved oxygen, dissolved inorganic nitrogen, phosphate and total phosphorus concentrations between the fish farm and …
b-glucan binding protein (bGBP), a pattern recognition protein was purified from the haemolymph of freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii by heparin affinity chromatography that showed a single band in native gradient PAGE. The b-glucan binding property of the purified protein was confirmed in a phenoloxidase (PO) assay, where addition of bGBP along with b-glucan increased the specific P…
Spawning is a key but often fragile event in the life cycles of fish populations. Nevertheless, it has been relatively little studied for lithophilic lacustrine species requiring hard spawning substrates, such as gravels or stones, largely devoid of fine sediments. Twelve demonstrated or putative spawning grounds of Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) in shallow and deep areas of the north and s…
1. Bycatch of non-target species in commercial fishing nets can have adverse impacts on their populations. Freshwater turtle populations are particularly susceptible to increases in adult mortality, and freshwater turtles are among the most threatened vertebrates. 2. As a case study, the population-level impacts of bycatch mortality on freshwater turtles were evaluated in Lake Opinicon, Ontari…
A total of 30 microsatellite markers were isolated from miiuy croaker, Miichthys miiuy, and characterized. Of these, 24 were polymorphic with an average of 4.33 alleles per locus (range: 2–8). The observed (Ho) and expected (He) heterozygosities ranged from 0.0667 to 1.0000 (mean: 0.6361) and 0.3828 to 0.8139 (mean: 0.6443), respectively. The mean polymorphism information content (PIC) value …
A rapid current-assisted sintering technology (CAST) was used to bond electronic devices with nanosilver paste, which is a promising alternative compared with traditional solders. Instead of using an external heating source, the specimen and bonding material of nanosilver paste were heated by the alternating current whose current direction is not constant. Die-shear testing and hardness measur…
Oogenesis in fishes follows a universal plan; yet, due to differences in the synchrony and rate of egg development, spawning frequency varies from daily to once in a lifetime. Some species spawn and feed in separate areas, during different seasons, by storing energy and drawing on it later for reproduction (i.e. capital breeding). Other species spawn using energy acquired locally, throughout a …
Maximum (aerobic) metabolic rate (MMR) is defined here as the maximum rate of oxygen consumption (Ṁ O2max) that a fish can achieve at a given temperature under any ecologically relevant circumstance. Different techniques exist for eliciting MMR of fishes, of which swim-flume respirometry (critical swimming speed tests and burst-swimming protocols) and exhaustive chases are the most common. Av…
Sardinella aurita is the most abundant small pelagic fish in the Senegalese–Mauritanian region. The success of its reproduction crucially depends on the local circulation as this determines whether larvae reach coastal nursery areas favorable to their survival or are dispersed into the open ocean. As a first step towards evaluating sardinella vulnerability to climate-driven hydrodynamical cha…
Controlling and analyzing cyberphysical and robotics systems is increasingly becoming a Big Data challenge. We study the case of predicting drivers’ travel times in a large urban area from sparse GPS traces.We present a framework that can accommodate a wide variety of traffic distributions and spread all the computations on a cluster to achieve small latencies. Our framework is built on Discr…
Abstract—Lack of bladder fullness sensation is an issue that arises in different neurogenic conditions and in addition to influencing patients’ quality of life, can result in serious kidney damage. We describe a wireless wearable sensor for detecting bladder fullness using near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). The sensor has been tested in vitro and in vivo to verify its feasibility and is sho…
We present a study in human-centered automation that has potential to reduce patient side effects from high dose rate brachytherapy (HDR-BT). To efficiently deliver radiation to the prostate while minimizing trauma to sensitive structures such as the penile bulb, we modified the Acubot-RND 7-axis robot to guide insertion of diamond-tip needles into desired skew-line geometric arrangements.We ex…
The aim of this survey was to study the cover and the composition of macroepiphytic species on the leaves of Posidonia oceanica in the east of Tunisia. Surveys were conducted in December 2009 (winter period), March (spring period and August 2010 (summer period) in a fringing reef located in Chebba. At each sampling date, 15 adult leaves were randomly collected and divided into basal and apical …
The mechanisms through which brown-marbled grouper accomplishes resistance to infection, particularly against Vibrios, are not yet fully understood. In this study, brown-marbled grouper fingerlings were experimentally infected with Vibrio parahaemolyticus, to identify disease resistance grouper, and the serum proteome profiles were compared between resistant and susceptible candidates, via t…
In this paper, the impact of interface charges on the performance of a short-channel symmetric dielectric pocket double-gate (DP-DG) MOSFET has been investigated. An analytical drain current model for DP-DG MOSFET has been developed, which is also useful for investigating the impact of dual-material ATLAS 3-D simulator. In addition, exhaustive simulation has been carried out to address the im…
The capability of noninvasive and precise micromanipulation of sensitive, living cells is necessary for understanding their underlying biological processes. Optical tweezers (OT) is an effective tool that uses highly focused laser beams for accurate manipulation of cells and dielectric beads at microscale. However, direct exposure of the laser beams on the cells can negatively influence their b…
The speed of intervention is one of the major factors in increasing the survival rate of patients suffering from acute coronary ischemia. The two principal techniques currently in use: pharmacological and interventional, can be employed to re-canalize coronary arteries, but the former is slow acting and often leads to incomplete reperfusion, while the latter requires specialized personnel in a…
Public clouds provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to users who do not own sufficient compute resources. IaaS achieves the economy of scale by multiplexing, and therefore faces the challenge of scheduling tasks to meet the peak demand while preserving Quality-of-Service (QoS). Previous studies proposed proactive machine purchasing or cloud federation to resolve this problem. However, the …
A nonlinear ADC dedicated to the digitization of neural signals in implantable brain-machine interfaces is presented. Benefitting from an exponential quantization function, effective resolution of the proposed ADC in the digitization of action potentials is almost 2 bits more than its physical number of bits. Hence, it is shown in this paper that the choice of a proper nonlinear quantization f…
We consider the problem of segmenting and tracking deformable objects in color video with depth (RGBD) data available from commodity sensors such as the Asus Xtion Pro Live or Microsoft Kinect. We frame this problem with very few assumptions—no prior object model, no stationary sensor, and no prior 3-D map—thus making a solution potentially useful for a large number of applications, includi…
A common observation is that egg size increases with maternal size within populations. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain this phenomenon. Most recently, it was suggested that the optimal egg size depends on female size due to correlations between (i) breeding time and egg size selection and (ii) female size and breeding time, and as such, the positive egg size–maternal size re…
A 60-d feeding trial was conducted to investigate the effect of dietary maize starch on growth performance, feed utilization, and apparent digestibility coefficient (ADC) and key hepatic enzyme activities regulating glycolytic and gluconeogenic metabolic pathways of juvenile obscure puffer, Takifugu obscurus (Abe) (initial body weight = 7.9±0.2 g). Five isonitrogenous and isolipidic diets cont…
The effect of four different light regimes on growth was studied in lenok, Brachymystax lenok. Fish with average weights of 5.5 g were subjected to four different photoperiods (0L:24D, 6L:18D, 12L:12D and 24L:0D) for 35 days. The specific growth rate (SGR) of lenok in 24-h darkness had a significantly higher SGR than those in the continuous light regime (P < 0.05); however, there was no signifi…
We have fabricated an amorphous InGaZnO thinfilm transistor with HfLaO gate dielectric, and the influence of annealing the gate dielectric in oxygen on the device characteristics is investigated in detail. It is demonstrated that this annealing treatment can effectively suppress the negative oxide charges. In addition, the effect of this annealing treatment to suppress the acceptor-like border…
Resource scheduling in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is one of the keys for large-scale Cloud applications. Extensive research on all issues in real environment is extremely difficult because it requires developers to consider network infrastructure and the environment, which may be beyond the control. In addition, the network conditions cannot be predicted or controlled. Therefore, perfo…
In this study, the complete foxl2 complementary (c)DNA sequence was isolated by simple modular-architecture research tool (SMART)er rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE). Two year-old female spotted scat, Scatophagus argus, were reared at different temperatures (23, 26 and 29∘ C) for 6 weeks, or fed with different concentrations of dietary fish oil (0, 2 or 6%) for 8 weeks. Ovarian developm…
In the present study we investigated the biogeography of macrozooplankton and fish biomass in the Bay of Biscay. In this region, we defined six different landscapes based on the hydrogeographical characteristics observed in spring 2009. We then related landscape’s characteristics and environmental parameters such as light attenuation depth and chlorophyll-a with macrozooplankton and fish aco…
Abstract The Columbia River Basin (Basin) is located in the Pacific Northwest, United States. The 370 hydroelectric dams in the Basin provide the Pacific Northwest with many services including hydropower generation, flood control, agricultural irrigation and navigation. The basin also provides habitat for a variety of anadromous and resident fishes and wildlife species. Balancing the energy dem…
1. Asian topmouth gudgeon Pseudorasbora parva has been recognized as a highly invasive cyprinid fish species in Europe that may present risk to native fish communities. 2. The present study aimed to investigate whether a native piscivorous fish, pike Esox lucius, is able to reduce the establishment success and invasiveness of topmouth gudgeon in shallow ponds. A large-scale, replicated whole-p…
Larval growth and hatching days of lanternfishes Diogenichthys laternatus and Myctophum nitidulum (Myctophidae) collected in September 2012 in nearshore waters (
This study focused on the comparison of growth and mortality of Lion’s Paw scallops Nodipecten subnodosus from Gulf of California and Pacific populations and their reciprocal transplants, cultured in suspended module and bottom culture in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Environmental parameters were monitored to determine site-specific differences and were correlated with scallops’ populati…