Distal dorsal forearm flap

Reinstatement and spontaneous recovery of previously extinguished nicotine-taking behavior were examined in rats. Male subjects were trained to self-administer nicotine (30 microg/kg per infusion, IV; one 60-min session per day for 3 weeks). Extinction sessions were then given for 5-10 days during which saline was substituted for nicotine. Subsequently, in the first set of tests for nicotine seeking, the reinstatement of lever presses that previously delivered nicotine was examined after priming injections of saline and nicotine (75, 150 and 300 microg/kg, SC; and 30 and 60 microg/kg, IV). In the second set of tests for nicotine-seeking, rats were tested after an additional 21-day drug-free period during which they were not exposed to the self-administration chambers (a test for the spontaneous recovery of drug seeking), and after priming injections of nicotine (150 and 300 microg/kg, SC). Reinstatement of extinguished food-reinforced behavior after exposure to nicotine was also determined. Priming injections of nicotine reinstated nicotine seeking regardless of the route of administration. In addition, previously extinguished nicotine seeking recovered spontaneously after a 21-day period during which rats were not exposed to the drug-taking environment. Nicotine also reinstated extinguished food-reinforced behavior in rats with a history of nicotine self-administration, but not in drug-naive rats. The present results extend previous work with opioid and stimulant drugs on reinstatement of drug seeking by the self-administered drug. It also appears that, as with other positive reinforcers, the mere passage of time is a sufficient condition for the spontaneous recovery of extinguished nicotine seeking.     

Positional distribution of CLA in TAG of lamb tissues

The content and positional distribution of CLA in TAG fractions of lamb tissues was examined with either preformed CLA or the linoleic acid precursor of CLA in the diet as experimental treatments. The CLA content of phospholipid (PL) from these tissues was also examined. Thirteen lambs were randomized to the following dietary treatments: (i) control diet (no supplement); (ii) CLA supplementation (0.33 g d⁻¹ for 21 d prior to weaning) to milk-replacer of pre-ruminating lambs, or (iii) feeding linoleic acid-rich oil (6% safflower oil on a dry matter basis) to weaned ruminating lambs. At slaughter, tissue samples were procured from diaphragm, rib muscle, and subcutaneous (SC) adipose tissue. Safflower oil supplementation in the diet resulted in an increase in CLA content of the TAG from diaphragm, rib muscle, and SC adipose tissue by about threefold (P<0.05) on a mol% basis. CLA was localized to the sn-1/3 positions of TAG. Animals that received pre-formed CLA, however, had increased proportions of CLA at the sn-2 position of TAG from SC adipose tissue, suggesting that there were tissue-specific dietary effects and possible age-related effects on the mode of FA incorporation into TAG. Safflower oil supplementation in the diet had no effect on the CLA content of PL from diaphragm, rib muscle, and SC adipose tissue, suggesting that CLA was preferentially incorporated into the TAG of these tissues.     

UV-shielding by a polyurethane/f-Oil fly ash-CeO2 protective coating

A waste material called oil fly ash (OFA) was acid-functionalized, yielding f-OFA-COOH, which was then reacted with cerium oxide (CeO₂) to make CeO₂-functionalized OFA, or f-OFA-CeO₂. Pristine OFA and f-OFA-CeO₂ were used to make waterborne polyurethane (WBPU) dispersions, referred to as WBPU/OFA and WBPU/f-OFA-CeO₂, respectively, with defined OFA and f-OFA-CeO₂ content. All the dispersions were applied to mild steel as organic coatings to evaluate their protective properties, such as their hydrophobicity, adhesive strength and UV-shielding resistance. These protective properties varied based on the OFA and f-OFA-CeO₂ content. The highest water contact angle, minimum water swelling and maximum adhesive strength were found using WBPU/f-OFA-CeO₂-20 coating (using 2.00 wt% f-OFA-CeO₂), which also showed the maximum ultraviolet (UV) absorption via UV–vis spectroscopy analysis. This UV shielding result also matched field test results, as that coating was found to exhibit the lowest UV degradation near a marine atmosphere, as shown by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. The least affected hydrophobicity was also recorded for the sample with the WBPU/f-OFA-CeO₂-20 coating.     

Are U.K. Citizens Satisfied With E-Government Services? Identifying and Testing Antecedents of Satisfaction

Citizens’ satisfaction is acknowledged as one of the most significant influences for e-government adoption and diffusion. This study examines the impact of information quality, system quality, trust, and cost on user satisfaction of e-government services. Using a survey, this study collected 1518 valid responses from e-government service adopters across the United Kingdom. Our empirical outcomes show the five factors identified in this study have a significant impact on U.K. citizens’ satisfaction with e-government services.     

Toward an efficient and scalable feature selection approach for internet traffic classification

There is significant interest in the network management and industrial security community about the need to identify the “best” and most relevant features for network traffic in order to properly characterize user behaviour and predict future traffic. The ability to eliminate redundant features is an important Machine Learning (ML) task because it helps to identify the best features in order to improve the classification accuracy as well as to reduce the computational complexity related to the construction of the classifier. In practice, feature selection (FS) techniques can be used as a preprocessing step to eliminate irrelevant features and as a knowledge discovery tool to reveal the “best” features in many soft computing applications. In this paper, we investigate the advantages and disadvantages of such FS techniques with new proposed metrics (namely goodness, stability and similarity). We continue our efforts toward developing an integrated FS technique that is built on the key strengths of existing FS techniques. A novel way is proposed to identify efficiently and accurately the “best” features by first combining the results of some well-known FS techniques to find consistent features, and then use the proposed concept of support to select a smallest set of features and cover data optimality. The empirical study over ten high-dimensional network traffic data sets demonstrates significant gain in accuracy and improved run-time performance of a classifier compared to individual results produced by some well-known FS techniques.     

Lateral Magnetically Modulated Multilayers by Combining Ion Implantation and Lithography

The combination of lithography and ion implantation is demonstrated to be a suitable method to prepare lateral multilayers. A laterally, compositionally, and magnetically modulated microscale pattern consisting of alternating Co (1.6 µm wide) and Co‐CoO (2.4 µm wide) lines has been obtained by oxygen ion implantation into a lithographically masked Au‐sandwiched Co thin film. Magnetoresistance along the lines (i.e., current and applied magnetic field are parallel to the lines) reveals an effective positive giant magnetoresistance (GMR) behavior at room temperature. Conversely, anisotropic magnetoresistance and GMR contributions are distinguished at low temperature (i.e., 10 K) since the O‐implanted areas become exchange coupled. This planar GMR is principally ascribed to the spatial modulation of coercivity in a spring‐magnet‐type configuration, which results in 180° Néel extrinsic domain walls at the Co/Co‐CoO interfaces. The versatility, in terms of pattern size, morphology, and composition adjustment, of this method offers a unique route to fabricate planar systems for, among others, spintronic research and applications.     

Recent Advances in Rolling 2D TMDs Nanosheets into 1D TMDs Nanotubes/Nanoscrolls

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) van der Waals (vdW) 1D heterostructures are recently synthesized from 2D nanosheets, which open up new opportunities for potential applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices. The most recent and promising strategies in regards to forming 1D TMDs nanotubes (NTs) or nanoscrolls (NSs) in this review article as well as their heterostructures that are produced from 2D TMDs are summarized. In order to improve the functionality of ultrathin 1D TMDs that are coaxially combined with boron nitride nanotubes and single-walled carbon nanotubes. 1D heterostructured devices perform better than 2D TMD nanosheets when the two devices are compared. The photovoltaic effect in WS₂ or MoS₂ NTs without a junction may exceed the Shockley–Queisser limit for the above-band-gap photovoltage generation. Photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution is accelerated when monolayer WS₂ or MoS₂ NSs are incorporated into a heterojunction. In addition, the photovoltaic performance of the WSe₂/MoS₂ NSs junction is superior to that of the performance of MoS₂ NSs. The summary of the current research about 1D TMDs can be used in a variety of ways, which assists in the development of new types of nanoscale optoelectronic devices. Finally, it also summarizes the current challenges and prospects.     

Introducing the IA-64 architecture

Microprocessors continue on the relentless path to provide more performance. Every new innovation in computing-distributed computing on the Internet, data mining, Java programming, and multimedia data streams-requires more cycles and computing power. Even traditional applications such as databases and numerically intensive codes present increasing problem sizes that drive demand for higher performance. Design innovations, compiler technology, manufacturing process improvements, and integrated circuit advances have been driving exponential performance increases in microprocessors. To continue this growth in the future, Hewlett Packard and Intel architects examined barriers in contemporary designs and found that instruction-level parallelism (ILP) can be exploited for further performance increases. This article examines the motivation, operation, and benefits of the major features of IA-64. Intel's IA-64 manual provides a complete specification of the IA-64 architecture     

Artificial intelligence implementation in the APS process diagnostic

Thermal spray process is a technique of coating manufacturing implementing a wide variety of materials and processes. This technique is characterized by up to 150 processing parameters influencing the coating properties. The control of the coating quality is needed through the consideration of a robust methodology that takes into account the parameter interdependencies, the process variability and offers the ability to quantify the processing parameter-process response relationships. The aim of this work is to introduce a new approach based on artificial intelligence responding to these requirements. A detailed procedure is presented considering an artificial neural network (ANN) structure which encodes implicitly the physical phenomena governing the process. The implementation of such a structure was coupled to experimental results of an optic sensor controlling the powder particle fusion state before the coating formation. The optimization steps were discussed and the predicted results were compared to the experimental ones allowing the identification of the control factors.     

An approach for stability analysis of a single-bit high-order digital sigma-delta modulator

In this work we considered the stability of a single-bit high-order sigma-delta modulator under dc input. A new approach for stability analysis is proposed. A nonlinear circle map is suggested to model the dynamics of the modulator. An analogy between the dynamics of the sigma-delta modulator and the sinusoidal digital phase-locked loop (DPLL) is studied and an approximate fixed point solution is presented with stability criteria. Suggestions for designing stabilized high-order systems are presented.