Mobile cloud computing (MCC) improves the computational capabilities of resource-constrained mobile devices. On the other hand, the mobile users demand a certain level of quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning while they use services from the cloud, even if the interfacing gateway changes due to the mobility of the users. In this paper, we identify, formulate, and address the problem of QoS-guar…
We address the problem of providing users with the ability to assess the integrity of join results produced by external computational providers and computed over externally stored databases. Our approach relies on different mutually supporting techniques offering strong integrity protection guarantees at a limited cost. The application of the approach is completely transparent to the computatio…
Power efficiency is one of the main issues that will drive the design of data centers, especially of those devoted to provide Cloud computing services. In virtualized data centers, consolidation of Virtual Machines (VMs) on the minimum number of physical servers has been recognized as a very efficient approach, as this allows unloaded servers to be switched off or used to accommodate more load,…
Ananalysis for net power characterization of a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) system is developed with Ballard 1.2-kW Nexa power module. A net power control (NPC)strategy based on the linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is proposed to achieve optimal oxygen excess ratio (OER). The H∞ suboptimal control problem is solved by LMI and the simulations are carried out under differe…
1. Predicting space use patterns of animals from their interactions with the environment is fundamental for understanding the effect of habitat changes on ecosystem functioning. Recent attempts to address this problem have sought to unify resource selection analysis,where animal space use is derived from available habitat quality, andmechanistic movement models, where detailedmovement proces…
Prerequisites for conservation planning are inventories of species, which are often recognised and described using morphological clues (The House of Lords 2003; The Royal Society 2003; Mace 2004). However, taxa identification using morphological criteria may be challenging, especially in simple organisms that present few discriminant synapomorphies and high phenotypic plasticity, such as cni…
Amniote vertebrates, the group consisting of mammals and reptiles including birds, possess various mechanisms of sex determination. Under environmental sex determination (ESD), the sex of individuals depends on the environmental conditions occurring during their development and therefore there are no sexual differences present in their genotypes. Alternatively, through the mode of genotypic …
The 1.5 Gbp/2C genome of pedunculate oak (Quercus robur) has been sequenced. A strategy was established for dealing with the challenges imposed by the sequencing of such a large, complex and highly heterozygous genome by a whole-genome shotgun (WGS) approach, without the use of costly and time-consuming methods, such as fosmid or BAC clone-based hierarchical sequencing methods. The sequencin…
We defined the somatic environment in which female germinal cells develop, and performed ultrastructural analyses of various somatic cell types, with particular reference to muscle cells and follicle cells, that reside within the ovary at different stages of oogenesis. Our findings show that ovarian wall of the crayfish is composed of long muscle cells, blood cells, blood vessels and hemal s…
Plant sexual systems can be affected by various environmental factors, and thus show a range of morphological differences. The associations between plant sexual systems and morphology are unique, for example, the subnival belt of the Hengduan Mountains has harsh climatic conditions, but hosts remarkable biodiversity. However, these associations have received surprisingly little attention. We…
Permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSM)have been widely used in a variety of applications. A strong electromagnetic force exists between the rotor magnets and the stator core in a PMSM. The force directly causes mechanical deformation and vibration of the stator. In small PM motors, mechanical vibration comes mainly from the electromagnetic force of the stator. This paper gives the general…
Reviewers performing systematic literature reviews require understanding of the review process and of the knowledge domain. This paper presents an iterative approach for conducting systematic literature reviews that addresses the problems faced by reviewers who are novices in one or both levels of understanding. This approach is derived from traditional systematic literature reviews and based …
1. Current developments of diversity measures that consider that species are not equivalent, concentrate on how functionally or phylogenetically (dis)similar species are from each other (interspecific components). To assess the biodiversity of a community, few of the developed measures include intraspecific components, that is to say components that concern only the current features of the in…
Debates about how coevolution of sexual traits and preferences might promote evolutionary diversification have permeated speciation research for over a century. Recent work demonstrates that the expression of such traits can be sensitive to variation in the social environment. Here, we examined social flexibility in a sexually selected male trait—cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles—in the …
Objective: Here we evaluate morphological integration patterns and magnitudes in different skull regions to detect if shifts in morphological integration are correlated to the appearance of more processed (softer) diets. Methods: To do so, three transitional populations were analyzed, including samples from groups that inhabited the same geographical region and for which the evidence shows t…
Aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) thin films have been used in low cost transparent conductive oxide (TCO) applications. For flexible electronics, the devices are subjected to cyclic bending during manufacturing and usage, which may lead to both electrical and optical degradation of TCO thin films. This paper was designed to investigate the effect of the strained growth and normal growth methods …
Evolutionary theory for expenditure on gonads attracted little attention until studies in the past 3–4 decades of allocation to male and female function in hermaphrodites, and of relative testes size (RTS) in animals with separate sexes. RTS appears to have varied enormously over evolutionary time, from extremely high (over 40%) in some broadcast spawners to less than 1% in some taxa with co…
1. Functional diversity (FD) is an important concept for studies of both ecosystem processes and community assembly, so it is important to understand the behaviour of common metrics used to express it. 2. Data from an existing study of the relationship between FD and environmental drivers were used to simulate the impact of a progressive failure to measure the traits of all the species prese…
In this paper, a new diagnostic mean is introduced for accurate, reliable, and effective diagnosis of faults in deltaconnected induction motors. This mean is the zero-sequence stator current spectrum. The study is carried out with analytical calculations and finite-element method simulations. Most common faults are examined for a 4-kW cage induction motor. The analysis will reveal that the prop…
We present a novel, efficient, and flexible scheme to generate a high-quality mesh that approximates the outer boundary of a swept volume. Our approach comes with two guarantees. First, the approximation is conservative, i.e., the swept volume is enclosed by the generated mesh. Second, the one-sided Hausdorff distance of the generated mesh to the swept volume is upper bounded by a user defined …
By combining high-throughput sequencing with target enrichment (‘hybridization capture’), researchers are able to obtain molecular data from genomic regions of interest for projects that are otherwise constrained by sample quality (e.g. degraded and contamination-rich samples) or a lack of a priori sequence information (e.g. studies on nonmodel species). Despite the use of hybridization …
The ever-increasing number of studies that address the origin and evolution of Euarthropoda – whose extant representatives include chelicerates, myriapods, crustaceans and hexapods – are gradually reaching a consensus with regard to the overall phylogenetic relationships of some of the earliest representatives of this phylum. The stem-lineage of Euarthropoda includes numerous forms that r…
1. Radiotelemetry and satellite-based telemetry approaches are essential to describe the behaviour and biology of animals. This is especially true for bats, whose small size and cryptic lifestylesmake themchallenging to study. However, only a handful of studies have evaluated how transmitter mass and the attachment method affect bat behaviour or health, and none have assessed the development…
Recent studies have demonstrated adaptive evolutionary responses to climate change, but little is known about how these responses may influence ecological interactions with other organisms, including natural enemies.We used a resurrection experiment in the greenhouse to examine the effect of evolutionary responses to drought on the susceptibility of Brassica rapa plants to a fungal pathogen, Al…
1. Telomeres play a fundamental role in the protection of chromosomal DNA and in the regulation of cellular senescence. Recent work in human epidemiology and evolutionary ecology suggests adult telomere length (TL) may reflect past physiological stress and predict subsequent morbidity and mortality, independent of chronological age. 2. Several differentmethods have been developed to measure…
Synchronizing sequences have been proposed in the late 1960s to solve testing problems on systems modeled by finitestate machines. Such sequences lead a system, seen as a black box, from an unknown current state to a known final one. This paper presents a first investigation of the computation of synchronizing sequences for systems modeled by synchronized Petri nets. In the first part of the p…
This study proposes an online monitoring technique for nonlinear multiple-mode problems in industrial processes. The contributions of the proposed technique are summarized as follows: 1) Lazy learning (LL), a new adaptive local modeling method, is introduced for multiple-mode process monitoring. In this method, multiple modes are separated and accurately modeled online, and the between-mode dy…
Prediction of acoustic noise distribution generated by electric machines has become an integral part of design and control in noise sensitive applications. This paper presents a fast and precise acoustic noise imaging technique for switched reluctance machines (SRMs). This method is based on distribution of radial vibration in the stator frame of the SRM. Radial vibration of the stator frame, …
Rhizocephalan barnacles have been reported to parasitize a wide range of king crab species (Lithodidae). So far all these parasites have been assigned to a single species, Briarosaccus callosus Boschma, 1930, which is assumed to have a global distribution. Here we investigate Briarosaccus specimens from three different king crab hosts from the fjord systems of Southeastern Alaska: Lithodes a…
Allotetraploid wild emmer wheat, Triticum dicoccoides (TD) 2n¼28, the progenitor of most cultivated bread wheat, is an ecological specialist and excellent model organism for advancing evolutionary theory, wheat evolution, and wheat improvement. The center of origin and diversity of TD is northeastern Upper Galilee and the Golan. Elsewhere in the Fertile Crescent, it occurs in semi‐isolate…
Cepaea’ vindobonensis has been shown to be closely related to Caucasotachea in recent molecular studies. The phylogenetic relationships within this clade and especially the phylogenetic position of ‘Cepaea’ vindobonensis were, however, not well resolved. Our phylogenetic analyses on the basis of an increased number of molecular genetic loci from the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes unamb…
The effect of climatic conditions and ionic contamination on the reliability of printed circuit board assembly has been investigated in terms of leakage current (LC) and electrochemical migration susceptibility. The change in LC as a function of relative humidity (RH) and temperature was measured using single components (size 0805) and surface insulation resistance comb patterns precontaminated…
A systematic revision, redescription and a first generic conspectus on a worldwide basis of the scarcely studied plant bug tribe Monaloniini (Insecta: Heteroptera: Miridae: Bryocorinae) is given. This reclassification is of great significance to agriculture as some monaloniines are major pests of cocoa, cashew, tea and other foodplants. A key to genera is given, as well as generic diagnoses …
Hydrozoan cnidarians are widespread in modern environments, but their polyps or hydroids, when not biomineralized, are generally rare in the fossil record. To assess the affinities of four hydrozoan taxa previously described on the basis of supposed fossils of non-biomineralized hydroids, we re-analysed the type specimens of these taxa using a combination of light and electron microscopic tools…
1. ‘Dated-tip’methods ofmolecular dating useDNAsequences sampled at different times, to estimate the age of their most recent common ancestor. Several tests of ‘temporal signal’ are available to determine whether data sets are suitable for such analysis.However, it remains unclear whether these tests are reliable. 2. We investigate the performance of several tests of temporal signal,…
1. The controlled adjustment of body temperature (Tb) by animals in relation to ambient temperature (Ta), or heterothermy, is a phenomenon that has a clear adaptive value. Heterothermy results in a substantial reduction in energy expenditure and water loss, but it also incurs costs, such as the energy cost required for rewarming, energy cost of excretion of metabolic wastes, delayed developm…
1. Secondary hole-nesting birds that do not construct nest holes themselves and hence regularly breed in nest boxes constitute important model systems for field studies in many biological disciplines with hundreds of scientists and amateurs involved. Those research groups are spread overwide geographic areas that experience considerable variation in environmental conditions, and researchers pr…
1. The body condition of free-ranging animals affects their response to stress, decisions, ability to fulfil vital needs and, ultimately, fitness. However, this key attribute in ecology remains difficult to assess, and there is a clear need for more integrativemeasures than the common univariate proxies. 2. We propose a systems biology approach that positions individuals along a gradient fro…
Male stag beetles possess colossal mandibles, which they wield in combat to obtain access tofemales. As with many other sexually selected weapons, males with longer mandibles win more fights. However, variation in the functional morphology of these structures, used in male-male combat, is less well understood. In this study, mandible bite force, gape, structural strength, and potential tradeoff…
1. Understanding species spatial occurrence patterns and their environmental dependence is one of the fundamental goals in ecology and evolution. Often, occurrence models are built with presence-only data because absence data are unavailable. We compare the strengths and limitations of the recently developed presence-only modellingmethod, Maxlike, with themorewidely usedMaxent. 2. In spite …
To endow game characters with more realistic affective behavior, the notion of prospect-based emotions plays an important role: recent literature suggests that emotional states of such agents should not only be triggered by present stimuli, but also by anticipation on future stimuli, and evaluation of past stimuli in the context of these anticipations. Within the current study, an extension of …
1. Integral projectionmodels (IPMs) use information on how an individual’s state influences its vital rates – survival,growth and reproduction – to make population projections. IPMs are constructed from regression models predicting vital rates from state variables (e.g. size or age) and covariates (e.g. environment). By combining regressions of vital rates, an IPM provides mechanistic i…
Brushless doubly fed machine (BDFM) shows promising results for wind power and adjustable-speed drive applications. Due to poor rotor magnetic coupling and relatively high value of slip, core loss is an important factor which can affect the steadystate and dynamic performance of BDFM. Specifically, core loss plays a major role when evaluating the efficiency of the machine. By now, there is no …
The performance of batteries as uninterruptable power sources in any industry cannot be taken for granted. The failures in battery systems of safety-related electric systems can lead to performance deterioration, costly replacement, and, more importantly, serious hazards. The possible failures in battery systems are currently determined through periodic maintenance activities. However, it is de…
Establishing phylogenetic relationships of miniature fishes is challenging in taxa with developmental truncation. Within the Characiformes, developmental truncation appears to be relatively rare, with the Neotropical genus Priocharax being an example. Priocharax includes three miniature species among the smallest of the order and has been hypothesized to belong to the Heterocharacinae. The p…
Comprising about 17 500 described species, bees constitute a well-established clade of pollen-feeding Hymenoptera (Michener 2007). In the last 15 years, our understanding of bee phylogeny and evolution has made great progress due to increasing use of nucleotide sequences and model-based phylogenetic methods (Danforth et al. 2013). Molecular data have provided new insights into phylogenetic r…
1. Speed regulations of watercraft in protected areas are designed to reduce lethal collisions with wildlife but can have economic consequences.We present a quantitative framework for investigating the risk of deadly collisions between boats and wildlife. 2. We apply encounter rate theory to demonstrate how marine mammal–boat encounter rate can be used to predict the expected number of de…
The effect of redundancy on the aging of an efficient maximum distance separable (MDS) parity-protected distributed storage system that consists of MDS-parity protected array of storage units is explored. In light of the experimental evidences and survey data, this paper develops generalized expressions for the reliability of array storage systems based on more realistic time to failure distri…
We investigate the dielectric breakdown of aluminum oxide (Al2O3) interfacial layers compared with SiO2 used in the high-k gate dielectric stacks. We predict the maximum operating voltage for a ten-year lifetime, using extracted values of Weibull β, voltage power law exponent (n), and breakdown voltage. We show that the Al2O3 interface layer reliability is sufficient for it to be considered a…
In numerous cellular applications, cells are transported to specific positions or extracted from complex cell solutions. Therefore, an efficient cell transportation path planner for these applications is important for avoiding collisions with other cells or obstacles. In this paper, a path planning approach to transporting cells using a robot-aided optical manipulation system is presented. Opt…