Furan–thiophene copolymers: Electrosynthesis and electrochemical behavior

The electrochemical copolymerization of furan and thiophene was performed at a constant electrode potential in a binary solvent system consisting of boron trifluoride/ethyl ether and an additional amount of ethyl ether (molar ratio = 1 : 2). The obtained homopolymers and copolymers were characterized with cyclic voltammetry and infrared spectroscopy. The influence of the applied electropolymerization potential and the monomer feed ratio of furan and thiophene on the copolymers was investigated. The furan–thiophene copolymers showed good stability of the redox activity in an acetonitrile‐based electrolyte solution. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2008     

PDQ: Parallel Distance Queries for deformable meshes

This paper presents a new algorithm to efficiently maintain Bounding-Volume Hierarchies (BVHs) for fast distance queries with deformable polygon meshes using multi-core architectures. The method involves inflating the bounding volumes in an efficient manner to guarantee the enclosure of the deformable model within the BVH at all times. This is done at low additional computation and memory cost without significantly degrading the quality of the BVH and also in a fashion that allows a simple parallel implementation. Additionally, to facilitate fast queries specifically for deforming meshes, we propose a novel algorithm for the bottom-up construction of BVHs that results in much faster distance queries.     

Home Automation Using Augmented Reality (HAAR)

Wireless Personal Communications - The development of Smart Home Controllers has seen rapid growth in recent years, especially for smart devices, that can utilize the Internet of Things (IoT)....     

Improving cache locking performance of modern embedded systems via the addition of a miss table at the L2 cache level

To confer the robustness and high quality of service, modern computing architectures running real-time applications should provide high system performance and high timing predictability. Cache memory is used to improve performance by bridging the speed gap between the main memory and CPU. However, the cache introduces timing unpredictability creating serious challenges for real-time applications. Herein, we introduce a miss table (MT) based cache locking scheme at level-2 (L2) cache to further improve the timing predictability and system performance/power ratio. The MT holds information of block addresses related to the application being processed which cause most cache misses if not locked. Information in MT is used for efficient selection of the blocks to be locked and victim blocks to be replaced. This MT based approach improves timing predictability by locking important blocks with the highest number of misses inside the cache for the entire execution time. In addition, this technique decreases the average delay per task and total power consumption by reducing cache misses and avoiding unnecessary data transfers. This MT based solution is effective for both uniprocessors and multicores. We evaluate the proposed MT-based cache locking scheme by simulating an 8-core processor with 2 levels of caches using MPEG4 decoding, H.264/AVC decoding, FFT, and MI workloads. Experimental results show that in addition to improving the predictability, a reduction of 21% in mean delay per task and a reduction of 18% in total power consumption are achieved for MPEG4 (and H.264/AVC) by using MT and locking 25% of the L2. The MT results in about 5% delay and power reductions on these video applications, possibly more on applications with worse cache behavior. For the FFT and MI (and other) applications whose code fits inside the level-1 instruction (I1) cache, the mean delay per task increases only by 3% and total power consumption increases by 2% due to the addition of the MT.     

Performance evaluation for DRED discrete-time queueing network analytical model

Due to the rapid development in computer networks, congestion becomes a critical issue. Congestion usually occurs when the connection demands on network resources, i.e. buffer spaces, exceed the available ones. We propose in this paper a new discrete-time queueing network analytical model based on dynamic random early drop (DRED) algorithm to control the congestion in early stages. We apply our analytical model on two-queue nodes queueing network. Furthermore, we compare between the proposed analytical model and three known active queue management (AQM) algorithms, including DRED, random early detection (RED) and adaptive RED, in order to figure out which of them offers better quality of service (QoS). We also experimentally compare the queue nodes of the proposed analytical model and the three AQM methods in terms of different performance measures, including, average queue length, average queueing delay, throughput, packet loss probability, etc., aiming to determine the queue node that offers better performance.     

Evolution of 3D mobile games development

3D computer graphics have been an important feature in games development since it was first introduced in the early 80s and there is no doubt that 3D based content is often viewed as more attractive in games than the more abstract 2D graphics. Many games publishers are keen to leverage their success in the console market into the mobile phone platform. However, the resource constraints of mobile phones and the fragmented nature of the environment present considerable challenges for games developers. In this paper we consider some of the current constraints together with current and, probable, future developments both in the software and hardware of mobile phones. As part of this process we benchmark some of the latest and most prevalent software and hardware devices to ascertain both the quality of the graphics produced and the effects upon battery life. Whilst our test results highlight that the current market does indeed present challenges, our research into the future developments highlights the fact we are approaching greater standardization, which will be an important factor for the successful development of 3D mobile games.

---

Real time 3D face and facial feature tracking

Detecting and tracking human faces in video sequences is useful in a number of applications such as gesture recognition and human-machine interaction. In this paper, we show that online appearance models (holistic approaches) can be used for simultaneously tracking the head, the lips, the eyebrows, and the eyelids in monocular video sequences. Unlike previous approaches to eyelid tracking, we show that the online appearance models can be used for this purpose. Neither color information nor intensity edges are used by our proposed approach. More precisely, we show how the classical appearance-based trackers can be upgraded in order to deal with fast eyelid movements. The proposed eyelid tracking is made robust by avoiding eye feature extraction. Experiments on real videos show the usefulness of the proposed tracking schemes as well as their enhancement to our previous approach.

New Beta-lactamases in Candidate Phyla Radiation: Owning Pleiotropic Enzymes Is a Smart Paradigm for Microorganisms with a Reduced Genome

The increased exploitation of microbial sequencing methods has shed light on the high diversity of new microorganisms named Candidate Phyla Radiation (CPR). CPR are mainly detected via 16S rRNA/metabarcoding analyses or metagenomics and are found to be abundant in all environments and present in different human microbiomes. These microbes, characterized by their symbiotic/epiparasitic lifestyle with bacteria, are directly exposed to competition with other microorganisms sharing the same ecological niche. Recently, a rich repertoire of enzymes with antibiotic resistance activity has been found in CPR genomes by using an in silico adapted screening strategy. This reservoir has shown a high prevalence of putative beta-lactamase-encoding genes. We expressed and purified five putative beta-lactamase sequences having the essential domains and functional motifs from class A and class B beta-lactamase. Their enzymatic activities were tested against various beta-lactam substrates using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and showed some beta-lactamase activity even in the presence of a beta-lactamase inhibitor. In addition, ribonuclease activity was demonstrated against RNA that was not inhibited by sulbactam and EDTA. None of these proteins could degrade single- and double-stranded-DNA. This study is the first to express and test putative CPR beta-lactamase protein sequences in vitro. Our findings highlight that the reduced genomes of CPR members harbor sequences encoding for beta-lactamases known to be multifunction hydrolase enzymes.     

Exposure of Mice to Thirdhand Smoke Modulates In Vitro and In Vivo Platelet Responses

Smoking is a risk factor for a variety of deleterious conditions, such as cancer, respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease. Thrombosis is an important and common aspect of several cardiovascular disease states, whose risk is known to be increased by both first- and secondhand smoke. More recently, the residual cigarette smoke that persists after someone has smoked (referred to as thirdhand smoke or THS) has been gaining more attention, since it has been shown that it also negatively affects health. Indeed, we have previously shown that 6-month exposure to THS increases the risk of thrombogenesis. However, neither the time-dependence of THS-induced thrombus formation, nor its sex dependence have been investigated. Thus, in the present study, we investigated these issues in the context of a shorter exposure to THS, specifically 3 months, in male and female mice. We show that the platelets from 3-month THS-exposed mice exhibited enhanced activation by agonists. Moreover, we also show that mice of both sexes exposed to THS have decreased tail bleeding as well as decreased thrombus occlusion time. In terms of the role of sex, intersex disparities in thrombus development and hemostasis as well as in platelet aggregation were, interestingly, observed. Together, our findings show that exposing mice to THS for 3 months is sufficient to predispose them to thrombosis; which seems to be driven, at least in part, by an increased activity in platelets, and that it does not manifest equally in both sexes.     

Iron Mobilization from Ferritin in Yeast Cell Lysate and Physiological Implications

Most in vitro iron mobilization studies from ferritin have been performed in aqueous buffered solutions using a variety of reducing substances. The kinetics of iron mobilization from ferritin in a medium that resembles the complex milieu of cells could dramatically differ from those in aqueous solutions, and to our knowledge, no such studies have been performed. Here, we have studied the kinetics of iron release from ferritin in fresh yeast cell lysates and examined the effect of cellular metabolites on this process. Our results show that iron release from ferritin in buffer is extremely slow compared to cell lysate under identical experimental conditions, suggesting that certain cellular metabolites present in yeast cell lysate facilitate the reductive release of ferric iron from the ferritin core. Using filtration membranes with different molecular weight cut-offs (3, 10, 30, 50, and 100 kDa), we demonstrate that a cellular component >50 kDa is implicated in the reductive release of iron. When the cell lysate was washed three times with buffer, or when NADPH was omitted from the solution, a dramatic decrease in iron mobilization rates was observed. The addition of physiological concentrations of free flavins, such as FMN, FAD, and riboflavin showed about a two-fold increase in the amount of released iron. Notably, all iron release kinetics occurred while the solution oxygen level was still high. Altogether, our results indicate that in addition to ferritin proteolysis, there exists an auxiliary iron reductive mechanism that involves long-range electron transfer reactions facilitated by the ferritin shell. The physiological implications of such iron reductive mechanisms are discussed.