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…
Natural populations of unisexual species occur among fish, amphibians and reptiles through normal reproductive strategies such as gynogenesis and hybridogenesis (Cimino, 1971; Dawley, 1989; Goddard and Schultz, 1993). Such unisexual populations have been reported in about 90 biotypes, which are commonly known as polyploids (Dawley, 1989; Vrijenhoek et al., 1989; Vasil’ev et al., 2005; Janko e…
Diel drift patterns of larvae of the endangered cyprinid Gnathopogon caerelescens in an inlet of the Ibanaiko Lagoon, connected to Lake Biwa in Japan, were assessed in April 2012. Peak occurrence of yolk-sac larvae was within a few hours after dark. Drift of newly hatched larvae is considered to be an important biological mechanism that ensures larval dispersal and recruitment from the inlets…
Annual fishes, which inhabit temporary pools with extremely limited habitat complexity and niche availability, display remarkable sexual dimorphism, rapid growth, and enormous investment into reproduction, all traits associated with high energy requirement. This study tests three hypotheses for two syntopic annual fishes (Austrolebias minuano and Cynopoecilus fulgens) found in six wetlands of …
Betanodavirus infection was diagnosed in larvae of farm-raised tilapia Oreochromis niloticus (L.), in central Thailand. Extensive vacuolar degeneration and neuronal necrosis were observed in histological sections with positive immunohistochemical staining for betanodavirus. Molecular phylogenetic analysis was performed based on the nucleotide sequences (1333 bases) of the capsid protein gene…
Flavobacterium psychrophilum is the causative agent of bacterial cold-water disease (BCWD) and causes severe loss of aquaculture production of ayu sweetfish Plecoglossus altivelis altivelis (Temminck & Schlegel, 1846) in Japan (Wakabayashi, Toyama & Iida 1994). The characteristics of BCWD in ayu are different from those of BCWD in salmonid fishes. BCWD in ayu generally occurs when water tempera…
Marine exit timing of sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka populations on the Haida Gwaii Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada, is described, with specific focus on Copper Creek. Marine exit in Copper Creek occurs>130 days prior to spawning, one of the longest adult freshwater residence periods recorded for any O. nerka population. Copper Creek presents an easy upstream migration, with mild wate…
China has a long history of aquaculture, and it contributes the largest aquaculture production worldwide. Aside from expanding aquaculture area and maximizing unit yield, introducing new potential species is greatly encouraged. Icefish (Salangidae) from Taihu Lake have been introduced into other lakes and reservoirs throughout the country since 1979. Neosalanx tangkahkeii was introduced into th…
The immune response in rainbow trout fry against Flavobacterium psychrophilum was elucidated using an immersion-based challenge with or without prior exposure to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). Samples were taken from the head kidney 4, 48, 125 and 192 h after immersion, and the regulation of several genes was examined. Bacterial load was assessed based on the presence of 16S rRNA and correlated wit…
A previous study documented a correlation between Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) recruitment in the Gulf of Maine and an annual index of the north component of May winds. This correlation was supported by modeling studies that indicated strong recruitment of Gulf of Maine Atlantic Cod results from high retention of spring-spawned larvae in years when winds were predominately out of the north, whic…
1. Predators exert a strong selective force on the ecosystems in which they exist, thereby altering the structure of ecological communities and leading to the evolution of prey defences. However, how interspecific differences in defence ability affect habitat partitioning amongst competing prey species remains unresolved. 2. We examined how prey defences affect species distribution in a natu…