Low-power high-slew-rate CMOS buffer amplifier for flat panel display drivers

A new high-slew-rate CMOS buffer amplifier consuming a very small quiescent current is proposed. This buffer amplifier recursively copies the output driving current and increases the tail current of the input differential pair during slewing. Since the proposed buffer has a possible slew rate higher than 10 V//spl mu/s for a load capacitance of 1 nF almost independently of static currents as low as 1 /spl mu/A, this buffer amplifier is promising for column driver ICs of flat panel displays that require low static power consumption, high current driving capabilities, and small silicon areas.     

Selective oxidation of alcohols using octahedral molecular sieves: influence of synthesis method and property–activity relations

Manganese oxides having a tunnel structure (OMS-2) have been utilized as selective catalysts for alcohol oxidation. In this study manganese oxide catalysts were synthesized in different media and modified by exchanging the tunnel cation by H⁺, using acid treatment or exchanging with NH₄⁺ followed by thermolysis. Various alcohol oxidations were performed using these catalysts to ascertain the influence of synthesis method on their activity. A correlation is made between lattice oxygen instability and activity of the catalysts, which indicates involvement of the lattice oxygen in the mechanism. The exchange of the tunnel cation with the smaller H⁺ ions leads to weakening of the Mn–O bond, as verified by temperature programmed desorption (TPD) results. Only the chemisorbed oxygen on the surface (O⁻) and the lattice oxygen in the layers close to the surface is involved in the oxygen transfer during the reaction.     

A 3.3-V single power supply 16-Mb nonvolatile virtual DRAM using aNAND flash memory technology

A 3.3-V 16-Mb nonvolatile memory having operation virtually identical to DRAM with package pin compatibility has been developed. Read and write operations are fully DRAM compatible except for a longer RAS precharge time after write. Fast random access time of 63 ns with the NAND flash memory cell is achieved by using a hierarchical row decoder scheme and a unique folded bit-line architecture which also allows bit-by-bit program verify and inhibit operation. Fast page mode with a column address access time of 21 ns is achieved by sensing and latching 4 k cells simultaneously. To allow byte alterability, nonvolatile restore operation with self-contained erase is developed. Self-contained erase is word-line based, and increased cell disturb due to the word-line based erase is relaxed by adding a boosted bit-line scheme to a conventional self-boosting technique. The device is fabricated in a 0.5-μm triple-well, p-substrate CMOS process using two-metal and three-poly interconnect layers. A resulting die size is 86.6 mm², and the effective cell size including the overhead of string select transistors is 2.0 μm²     

Expert system approach for reactor vessel integrity

This paper describes the development strategy of a prototype expert system, called RViES, for the reactor vessel integrity. The main objectives of the system are to assist engineers to perform fatigue and fracture mechanics analyses of reactor vessels quickly and accurately. The system consists of three parts; user interface, knowledge base and inference engine. Various rules recommended in codes and standards are stored in the knowledge base. Several case studies were performed to check the usefulness of the system.     

Perioperative specific management of blood volume loss in craniosynostosis surgery

Accurate assessment and replacement of blood loss and fluid-electrolyte deficit during craniosynostosis repair is difficult owing to patient size and the diversity of surgical technique. Forty-three patients undergoing primary craniosynostosis repair over a 10-year period were studied retrospectively to determine blood loss and fluid deficit and to assess blood transfusion practices during both intraoperative and postoperative periods. Blood loss was calculated on the basis of estimated red cell mass (ERCM) and fluid-electrolyte imbalance was investigated with blood samplings. Blood transfusion was considered appropriate if the postoperative or posttransfusion ERCM was within 12% of the preoperative value. Estimated fluid requirement (EFR) was used in 4 ml kg(-1) h(-1) except for neonates. Intraoperatively, 80% of all patients were appropriately managed with respect to blood transfusion and EFR. Postoperatively only 20% of the patients receiving transfusions were transfused appropriately. In 23.3% of these patients (10/43) unexpected respiratory distress developed immediately after their recovery from the anesthesia. With the measurement of estimated blood volume and allowable blood loss, appropriate transfusion could be achieved for the successful treatment of the primary craniosynostosis.     

Service-oriented smart home applications: composition, code generation, deployment, and execution

A smart home usually has a variety of devices or home appliance, instead of designing software for a specific home, this paper proposes a service-oriented framework with a set of ontology systems to support service and device publishing, discovery of devices and their services, composition of control software using existing control services that wrap devices, deployment, and execution of the composed service in an computing environment, monitoring the execution, and recovery from device failure. The ontology systems specify semantic information about devices, services, and workflows used in various smart home, and users can compose and recompose services for their specific needs. New devices, workflows, and services can be added into ontology. Most of the steps in this process can be automated including code generation. For example, service composition will be carried out in three steps: abstract workflow design, function construction, and device discovery, and different codes can be generated for different computing platforms such as Java and Open Services Gateway initiative environments. In this way, a variety of smart home can be constructed rapidly using the framework by discovery and composition using existing services and workflows. This paper illustrates this framework using a media control example to illustrate the ontology, discovery, composition, deployment, execution, monitoring, and recovery.     

Power- and time-aware buffer cache management for real-time embedded databases

Due to the explosive increases of data from both the cyber and physical worlds, the demand for database support in embedded systems is increasing. Databases for embedded systems, or embedded databases, are expected to provide timely in situ data services under various resource constraints, such as limited energy. However, traditional buffer cache management schemes, in which the primary goal is to minimize the number of I/O operations, is problematic since they do not consider the constraints of modern embedded devices such as limited energy and distinctive underlying storage. In particular, due to asymmetric read/write characteristics of flash memory-based storage of modern embedded devices, minimum buffer cache misses neither coincide with minimum power consumption nor minimum I/O deadline misses. In this paper we propose a novel power- and time-aware buffer cache management scheme for embedded databases. A novel multi-dimensional feedback control architecture is proposed and the characteristics of underlying storage of modern embedded devices is exploited for the simultaneous support of the desired I/O power consumption and the I/O deadline miss ratio. We have shown through an extensive simulation that our approach satisfies both power and timing requirements in I/O operations under a variety of workloads while consuming significantly smaller buffer space than baseline approaches.     

Attenuating Effects of Dieckol on Hypertensive Nephropathy in Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats

Hypertension induces renal fibrosis or tubular interstitial fibrosis, which eventually results in end-stage renal disease. Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is one of the underlying mechanisms of renal fibrosis. Though previous studies showed that Ecklonia cava extracts (ECE) and dieckol (DK) had inhibitory action on angiotensin (Ang) I-converting enzyme, which converts Ang I to Ang II. It is known that Ang II is involved in renal fibrosis; however, it was not evaluated whether ECE or DK attenuated hypertensive nephropathy by decreasing EMT. In this study, the effect of ECE and DK on decreasing Ang II and its down signal pathway of angiotensin type 1 receptor (AT1R)/TGFβ/SMAD, which is related with the EMT and restoring renal function in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), was investigated. Either ECE or DK significantly decreased the serum level of Ang II in the SHRs. Moreover, the renal expression of AT1R/TGFβ/SMAD was decreased by the administration of either ECE or DK. The mesenchymal cell markers in the kidney of SHRs was significantly decreased by ECE or DK. The fibrotic tissue of the kidney of SHRs was also significantly decreased by ECE or DK. The ratio of urine albumin/creatinine of SHRs was significantly decreased by ECE or DK. Overall, the results of this study indicate that ECE and DK decreased the serum levels of Ang II and expression of AT1R/TGFβ/SMAD, and then decreased the EMT and renal fibrosis in SHRs. Furthermore, the decrease in EMT and renal fibrosis could lead to the restoration of renal function. It seems that ECE or DK could be beneficial for decreasing hypertensive nephropathy by decreasing EMT and renal fibrosis.