Correction to: Double Vision Model Using Space-Time Function Control within Silicon Microring System

Silicon - The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake in the “Acknowledgments” section.     

A charge sharing–based switching scheme for SAR ADCs

This paper presents an energy-efficient switching scheme for successive approximation register (SAR) analogue-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed scheme employs charge recycling method to keep the capacitor arrays free of transitional energy between bit generations except reset phase. In comparison with the conventional switching scheme, the proposed one achieves 100% transitional energy saving without considering reset phase. In addition, configuration of a 10-bit SAR ADC shows that the proposed switching scheme reduces the capacitor area by 25% compared with the conventional switching scheme.     

Binders for jute-reinforced unsaturated polyester resin

Reinforcement of polyester resin with jute cloth under constant load is studied, The pretreatment of jute cloth with tetrahydrofuran and the effect of binding properties of poly(vinyl acetate) and acrylic acid and their effect on the impact, tensile, and water absorptions of jute cloth polyester composites are reported and their chemical reactions are discussed.     

Analytical Modeling of Short-Channel Fully-Depleted Triple Work Function Metal Gate (TWFMG) SOI MESFET

Silicon - In this paper, a new structure: triple work function metal gate SOI MESFET, intended for integration into the deep-submicron CMOS technology, is proposed. The gate of the device consists...     

Out-of-Field Hippocampus from Partial-Body Irradiated Mice Displays Changes in Multi-Omics Profile and Defects in Neurogenesis

The brain undergoes ionizing radiation exposure in many clinical situations, particularly during radiotherapy for brain tumors. The critical role of the hippocampus in the pathogenesis of radiation-induced neurocognitive dysfunction is well recognized. The goal of this study is to test the potential contribution of non-targeted effects in the detrimental response of the hippocampus to irradiation and to elucidate the mechanisms involved. C57Bl/6 mice were whole body (WBI) or partial body (PBI) irradiated with 0.1 or 2.0 Gy of X-rays or sham irradiated. PBI consisted of the exposure of the lower third of the mouse body, whilst the upper two thirds were shielded. Hippocampi were collected 15 days or 6 months post-irradiation and a multi-omics approach was adopted to assess the molecular changes in non-coding RNAs, proteins and metabolic levels, as well as histological changes in the rate of hippocampal neurogenesis. Notably, at 2.0 Gy the pattern of early molecular and histopathological changes induced in the hippocampus at 15 days following PBI were similar in quality and quantity to the effects induced by WBI, thus providing a proof of principle of the existence of out-of-target radiation response in the hippocampus of conventional mice. We detected major alterations in DAG/IP3 and TGF-β signaling pathways as well as in the expression of proteins involved in the regulation of long-term neuronal synaptic plasticity and synapse organization, coupled with defects in neural stem cells self-renewal in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. However, compared to the persistence of the WBI effects, most of the PBI effects were only transient and tended to decrease at 6 months post-irradiation, indicating important mechanistic difference. On the contrary, at low dose we identified a progressive accumulation of molecular defects that tended to manifest at later post-irradiation times. These data, indicating that both targeted and non-targeted radiation effects might contribute to the pathogenesis of hippocampal radiation-damage, have general implications for human health.     

An Engineered sgsh Mutant Zebrafish Recapitulates Molecular and Behavioural Pathobiology of Sanfilippo Syndrome A/MPS IIIA

Mucopolysaccharidosis IIIA (MPS IIIA, Sanfilippo syndrome type A), a paediatric neurological lysosomal storage disease, is caused by impaired function of the enzyme N-sulfoglucosamine sulfohydrolase (SGSH) resulting in impaired catabolism of heparan sulfate glycosaminoglycan (HS GAG) and its accumulation in tissues. MPS IIIA represents a significant proportion of childhood dementias. This condition generally leads to patient death in the teenage years, yet no effective therapy exists for MPS IIIA and a complete understanding of the mechanisms of MPS IIIA pathogenesis is lacking. Here, we employ targeted CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis to generate a model of MPS IIIA in the zebrafish, a model organism with strong genetic tractability and amenity for high-throughput screening. The sgsh^Δex5−6 zebrafish mutant exhibits a complete absence of Sgsh enzymatic activity, leading to progressive accumulation of HS degradation products with age. sgsh^Δex5−6 zebrafish faithfully recapitulate diverse CNS-specific features of MPS IIIA, including neuronal lysosomal overabundance, complex behavioural phenotypes, and profound, lifelong neuroinflammation. We further demonstrate that neuroinflammation in sgsh^Δex5−6 zebrafish is largely dependent on interleukin-1β and can be attenuated via the pharmacological inhibition of Caspase-1, which partially rescues behavioural abnormalities in sgsh^Δex5−6 mutant larvae in a context-dependent manner. We expect the sgsh^Δex5−6 zebrafish mutant to be a valuable resource in gaining a better understanding of MPS IIIA pathobiology towards the development of timely and effective therapeutic interventions.     

Extracting Optimal Policies of Hydropower Multi-Reservoir Systems Utilizing Enhanced Differential Evolution Algorithm

Deriving the optimal policies of hydropower multi-reservoir systems is a nonlinear and high-dimensional problem which makes it difficult to achieve the global or near global optimal solution. In order to optimally solve the problem effectively, development of optimization methods with the purpose of optimizing reservoir operation is indispensable as well as inevitable. This paper introduces an enhanced differential evolution (EDE) algorithm to enhance the exploration and exploitation abilities of the original differential evolution (DE) algorithm. The EDE algorithm is first applied to minimize two benchmark functions (Ackley and Shifted Schwefel). In addition, a real world two-reservoir hydropower optimization problem and a large scale benchmark problem, namely ten-reservoir problem, were considered to indicate the effectiveness of the EDE. The performance of the EDE was compared with the original DE to solve the three optimization problems. The results demonstrate that the EDE would have a powerful global ability and faster convergence than the original DE to solve the two benchmark functions. In the 10-reservoir optimization problem, the EDE proved to be much more functional to reach optimal or near optimal solution and to be effective in terms of convergence rate, standard deviation, the best, average and worst values of objective function than the original DE. Also, In the case of two-reservoir system, the best values of the objective function obtained 93.86 and 101.09 for EDE and DE respectively. Based on the results, it can be stated that the most important reason to improve the performance of the EDE algorithm is the promotion of local and global search abilities of the DE algorithm using the number of novel operators. Also, the results of these three problems corroborated the superior performance, the high efficiency and robustness of the EDE to optimize complex and large scale multi-reservoir operation problems.     

A new intelligent algorithm for dynamic facility layout problem in state of fuzzy constraints

In the present paper, the dynamic facilities layout problem is studied in presence of ambiguity of information flow. Product demand (and consequently material flow) is defined as fuzzy numbers with different membership functions. The problem is modeled in fuzzy programming. Three models of expected value, chance-constrained programming and dependent-chance programming and two hybrid intelligent algorithms are then presented. At the end, efficiency of algorithms for solving fuzzy models of dynamic facilities layout is shown through some numerical examples.     

A novel triple notch‐bands ultra wide‐band band‐pass filters using parallel multi‐mode resonators and CSRRs

This article discusses a technique based on combination of multimode resonators (MMR) and complementary split ring resonators (CSRR) to design multi notch‐bands ultra wide‐band (UWB) band‐pass filters (BPF). The proposed structure consists of two parallel multimode resonators, resulting in a dual notch‐band UWB BPF, integrated with a single cell of CSRR to realize the third notch‐band. The mechanism of realizing the notch‐bands is mathematically presented and a triple notch‐bands UWB BPF is designed, simulated and fabricated. The overall size of the proposed filter is reported to be around 36 × 7.7 mm² where a size reduction of around 35% is demonstrated in comparison to the conventional filter. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:375–381, 2014.