cssi/SciSciGPT-SciSciNet huggingface dataset:
Low-loss deep glass waveguides produced with dry silver electromigration process

We report an effective, simple dry silver electromigration technology designed to fabricate low-loss deep channel waveguides on a specially chosen BF450 glass substrate with refractive index of 1.472. The simplicity is achieved by using two stainless-steel electrodes to facilitate the electromigration process. In contrast to earlier ion exchange waveguides reported, a relatively high electric field of 545 V/mm was applied to the glass to speed up the migration and also to prevent silver ions driven into the glass from reducing into silver atoms, a major contributor to waveguide loss. The deep channel waveguides thus fabricated showed no discoloration or cracks, and attenuation losses of less than 0.1 dB/cm were measured using our 0.6328 /spl mu/m He-Ne laser edge-coupling setup. A scanning electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) detector was adopted to obtain the concentration profile of silver ions distributed in the channel waveguide region after the exchange. The EDX measurements were then utilized along with the Gladstone-Dale relation to deduce the refractive index profile; a nearly step-like profile was deduced from every deep channel waveguide fabricated.
Spotlight on Affect: Affect and Affective Forecasting in Impulse Control

The authors propose an alternative conceptualization to the Strack, Werth, and Deutsch (2006) model. This alternative conceptualization considers how the forecasting of emotional outcomes linked to controlling or failing to control impulses affects self-regulatory behavior. A set of future research questions is identified based on this conceptualization. The proposed model differs from that of Strack et al. (2006) by its focus on (a) affect, (b) impulse control (versus buying), and (c) deliberative processing linked to impulse control (or lack thereof).
Denial of service attacks and defenses in decentralized trust management

Trust management is an approach to scalable and flexible access control in decentralized systems. In trust management, a server often needs to evaluate a chain of credentials submitted by a client; this requires the server to perform multiple expensive digital signature verifications. In this paper, we study low-bandwidth Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks that exploit the existence of trust management systems to deplete server resources. Although the threat of DoS attacks has been studied for some application-level protocols such as authentication protocols, we show that it is especially destructive for trust management systems. Exploiting the delegation feature in trust management languages, an attacker can forge a long credential chain to force a server to consume a large amount of computing resource. Using game theory as an analytic tool, we demonstrate that unprotected trust management servers will easily fall prey to a witty attacker who moves smartly. We report our empirical study of existing trust management systems, which manifests the gravity of this threat. We also propose a defense technique using credential caching, and show that it is effective in the presence of intelligent attackers.
Beyond spheres: Murphy's silver nanorods and nanowires

In this viewpoint we discuss the early work of Murphy et al. on the colloidal synthesis of silver nanorods and nanowires, which represents a milestone in the controllable synthesis of anisotropic metal nanoparticles. We present here an overview of the impact of this pioneering work on the later drastic development of solution phase synthesis of shape-controlled metal nanostructures.
Conservative vs. Optimistic Parallelization of Stateful Network Intrusion Detection

This paper presents and experimentally analyzes the performance of three parallelization strategies for the popular open-source Snort network intrusion detection system (NIDS). The parallelizations include 2 conservative variants and 1 optimistic scheme. The conservative strategy parallelizes inspection at the level of TCP/IP flows, as any potential inter-packet dependences are confined to a single flow. The flows are partitioned among threads, and each flow is processed in-order at one thread. A second variation reassigns flows between threads to improve load balance but still requires that only one thread process a given flow at a time. The flow-concurrent scheme provides good performance for 3 of the 5 network packet traces studied, reaching as high as 4.1 speedup and 3.1 Gbps inspection rate on a commodity 8-core server. Dynamic reassignment does not improve performance scalability because it introduces locking overheads that offset any potential benefits of load balancing. Neither conservative version can achieve good performance, however, without enough concurrent networkflows. For this case, this paper presents an optimistic parallelization that exploits the observation that not all packets from a flow are actually connected by dependences. This system allows a single flow to be simultaneously processed by multiple threads, stalling if an actual dependence is found. The optimistic version has additional overheads that reduce speedup by 25% for traces with flow concurrency, but its benefits allow one additional trace to see substantial speedup (2.4 on five cores).
Schur-class multipliers on the Arveson space : De Branges-Rovnyak reproducing kernel spaces and commutative transfer-function realizations

An interesting and recently much studied generalization of the classical Schur class is the class of contractive operator-valued multipliers S(λ) for the reproducing kernel Hilbert space H(kd) on the unit ball Bd⊂Cd, where kd is the positive kernel kd(λ,ζ)=1/(1−〈λ,ζ〉) on Bd. The reproducing kernel space H(KS) associated with the positive kernel KS(λ,ζ)=(I−S(λ)S(ζ)∗)⋅kd(λ,ζ) is a natural multivariable generalization of the classical de Branges–Rovnyak canonical model space. A special feature appearing in the multivariable case is that the space H(KS) in general may not be invariant under the adjoints Mλj∗ of the multiplication operators Mλj:f(λ)↦λjf(λ) on H(kd). We show that invariance of H(KS) under Mλj∗ for each j=1,…,d is equivalent to the existence of a realization for S(λ) of the form S(λ)=D+C(I−λ1A1−⋯−λdAd)−1(λ1B1+⋯+λdBd) such that connecting operator U=[A1B1⋮⋮AdBdCD] has adjoint U∗ which is isometric on a certain natural subspace (U is “weakly coisometric”) and has the additional property that the state operators A1,…,Ad pairwise commute; in this case one can take the state space to be the functional-model space H(KS) and the state operators A1,…,Ad to be given by Aj=Mλj∗|H(KS) (a de Branges–Rovnyak functional-model realization). We show that this special situation always occurs for the case of inner functions S (where the associated multiplication operator MS is a partial isometry), and that inner multipliers are characterized by the existence of such a realization such that the state operators A1,…,Ad satisfy an additional stability property.
Examining technology acceptance by individual law enforcement officers: an exploratory study

Management of technology implementation has been a critical challenge to organizations, public or private. In particular, user acceptance is paramount to the ultimate success of a newly implemented technology in adopting organizations. This study examined acceptance of COPLINK, a suite of IT applications designed to support law enforcement officers' analyses of criminal activities. We developed a factor model that explains or predicts individual officers' acceptance decision-making and empirically tested this model using a survey study that involved more than 280 police officers. Overall, our model shows a reasonably good fit to officers' acceptance assessments and exhibits satisfactory explanatory power. Our analysis suggests a prominent core influence path from efficiency gain to perceived usefulness and then to intention to accept. Subjective norm also appears to have a significant effect on user acceptance through the mediation of perceived usefulness. Several managerial implications derived from our study findings are also discussed.
Development of intrinsic IPT scintillator

Abstract We report on the development of new plastic scintillators. Optical absorption, fluorescence and light output measurements are presented. Preliminary results on radiation damage effects are also given and compared to the effects on a commercial plastic scintillator, NE 110.
Predicting siRNA potency with random forests and support vector machines

Background Short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can be used to knockdown gene expression in functional genomics. For a target gene of interest, many siRNA molecules may be designed, whereas their efficiency of expression inhibition often varies.
On several varieties of cacti and their relations

Motivated by string topology and the arc operad, we introduce the notion of quasi-operads and consider four (quasi)-operads which are different varieties of the operad of cacti. These are cacti without local zeros (or spines) and cacti proper as well as both varieties with fixed constant size one of the constituting loops. Using the recognition principle of Fiedorow- icz, we prove that spineless cacti are equivalent as operads to the little discs operad. It turns out that in terms of spineless cacti Cohen's Gerstenhaber structure and Fiedorowicz' braided operad structure are given by the same explicit chains. We also prove that spineless cacti and cacti are homotopy equivalent to their normalized versions as quasi-operads by showing that both types of cacti are semi-direct products of the quasi-operad of their normalized versions with a re-scaling operad based on R>0. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of bi-crossed products of quasi-operads and show that the cacti proper are a bi-crossed product of the operad of cacti without spines and the operad based on the monoid given by the circle group S 1 . We also prove that this particular bi-crossed operad product is homotopy equivalent to the semi-direct product of the spineless cacti with the group S 1 . This implies that cacti are equivalent to the framed little discs operad. These results lead to new CW models for the little discs and the framed little discs operad. AMS Classification 55P48, 18D40; 55P35, 16S35
Nonpoint source pollution taxes and excessive tax burden

If a regulator is unable to measure firms' individual emissions, an ambient tax can be used to achieve the socially desired level of pollution. With this tax, each firm pays a unit tax on aggregate emissions. In order for the tax to be effective, firms must recognize that their decisions affect aggregate emissions. When firms behave strategically with respect to the tax-setting regulator, under plausible circumstances their tax burden is lower under an ambient tax, relative to the tax which charges firms on the basis of individual emissions. Firms may prefer the case where the regulator is unable to observe individual firm emissions, even if this asymmetric information causes the regulator to tax each firm on the basis of aggregate emissions.
An integrated force-balanced capacitive accelerometer for low-g applications

Abstract A low-cost monolithic accelerometer which incorporates a surface-micromachined polysilicon sensor with bipolar/MOS interface circuitry on a single chip has been developed for a measurement range of ± 5g. The accelerometer has a noise floor of 0.6 mg (Hz) 1 2 and a shock survival rating of 1000g. A sensitivity temperature coefficient ± 50 ppm °C−1 and an offset temperature coefficient of ±5 mg °C−1 have been achieved over the −40 to +105 °C automotive temperature range. A wide bandwidth from d.c. to 4 kHz is adjustable using a single external capacitor. The accelerometer operates on a single 5 V power supply and consumes 40 mW of power. It provides an analog output of 200 mV g−1 and a digitally activated self-test output of −5g.
Representation and reasoning with attributive descriptions

This paper surveys terminological representation languages and feature-based unification grammars pointing out the similarities and differences between these two families of attributive description formalisms. Emphasis is given to the logical foundations of these formalisms.
Cyclopentadienones as intermediates for the synthesis of highly functionalized biaryls

Abstract A new approach to the synthesis of substituted biaryls, via Diels–Alder reaction between cyclopentadienones and arylacetylenes, is described.
Discretization and Validation of the Continuum Approximation Scheme for Terminal System Design

This paper proposes an algorithm that automatically translates the continuum approximation (CA) recipes for location problems into discrete designs. It applies to terminal systems, but can also be used for other logistics problems. The study also systematically compares the logistics costs predicted by the CA approach with the actual costs for discrete designs obtained with the automated procedure. The predictions are quite accurate. The paper also gives conditions under which the discrete solution has a small optimality gap.
Grouping interdependent tasks: Using spectral graph partitioning to study complex systems

Research summary: This article uses spectral graph partitioning to advance strategic management research, and focuses on the study of complex systems that contain strongly connected components with component interactions that are weighted and directed. The spectral graph partitioning method complements existing methods, especially, when external architectural artifacts do not exist or are less than certain. We illustrate this methodology using a U.S. airline's production system. We highlight some useful metrics and show how researchers can apply this method to generate additional architectural insights. Managerial summary: We describe a method for analyzing the architecture of complex systems that contain directed and weighted component interactions, and in which each component is interdependent (directly or indirectly) on every other component. Using the spectra of a complex system, the method is not only tractable but also provides good and predictable groupings. We illustrate this method using the firm-level production task system of a firm found in the U.S. passenger airline sector. The method is useful if the system architecture is hidden, in flux, or both. The method may also permit a holistic comparison of different systems and their architectures. We discuss metrics and illustrate how they can provide additional architectural insights.
Self-excited piezoelectric cantilever oscillators

Abstract We describe a micromachined self-excited piezoelectric cantilever device whose oscillating frequency is in the audio range. The 2000 μm × 2000 μm × 2.8 μm cantilever has a zinc oxide (ZnO) piezoelectric thin film between two aluminum (Al) layers on a supporting layer of low-pressure chemical-vapor-deposited (LPCVD) low-stress silicon nitride. The transducer and an amplifier that drives the cantilever via a driving electrode constitute a self-excited unit. If the gain of the amplifier is sufficient to overcome the loss of the transducer and the resonance frequency is in the amplifier passband, the device oscillates and produces significant acoustic output. The self-excited acoustic output transducer could serve as a sensor for environmental quantities such as relative humidity or chemical vapor concentration. Simulation results show that the gravimetric sensitivity exceeds 5000 cm2 g−1 when the whole cantilever is covered with the sorptive film.
Compressive spectral embedding: sidestepping the SVD

Spectral embedding based on the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) is a widely used "preprocessing" step in many learning tasks, typically leading to dimensionality reduction by projecting onto a number of dominant singular vectors and rescaling the coordinate axes (by a predefined function of the singular value). However, the number of such vectors required to capture problem structure grows with problem size, and even partial SVD computation becomes a bottleneck. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity compressive spectral embedding algorithm, which employs random projections and finite order polynomial expansions to compute approximations to SVD-based embedding. For an m x n matrix with T non-zeros, its time complexity is O ((T + m + n) log(m + n)), and the embedding dimension is O (log(m + n)), both of which are independent of the number of singular vectors whose effect we wish to capture. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to circumvent this dependence on the number of singular vectors for general SVD-based embeddings. The key to sidestepping the SVD is the observation that, for downstream inference tasks such as clustering and classification, we are only interested in using the resulting embedding to evaluate pairwise similarity metrics derived from the l2-norm, rather than capturing the effect of the underlying matrix on arbitrary vectors as a partial SVD tries to do. Our numerical results on network datasets demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method, and motivate further exploration of its application to large-scale inference tasks.
In situ synthesis of 2-allyloxy-1-methylpyridinium triflate for the allylation of carboxylic acids

Abstract 2-Allyloxypyridinium triflate is formed in situ by treating a mixture of 2-allyloxypyridine, a carboxylic acid, and toluene with methyl triflate. Subsequent warming of the reaction mixture in the presence of potassium carbonate leads to efficient formation of allyl esters in good to excellent yields.
Likelihood Inference for Exponential-Trawl Processes

Integer-valued trawl processes are a class of serially correlated, stationary and infinitely divisible processes that Ole E. Barndorff-Nielsen has been working on in recent years. In this chapter, we provide the first analysis of likelihood inference for trawl processes by focusing on the so-called exponential-trawl process, which is also a continuous time hidden Markov process with countable state space. The core ideas include prediction decomposition, filtering and smoothing, complete-data analysis and EM algorithm. These can be easily scaled up to adapt to more general trawl processes but with increasing computation efforts.
HackAttack: Game-Theoretic Analysis of Realistic Cyber Conflicts

Game theory is appropriate for studying cyber conflict because it allows for an intelligent and goal-driven adversary. Applications of game theory have led to a number of results regarding optimal attack and defense strategies. However, the overwhelming majority of applications explore overly simplistic games, often ones in which each participant's actions are visible to every other participant. These simplifications strip away the fundamental properties of real cyber conflicts: probabilistic alerting, hidden actions, unknown opponent capabilities.In this paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to analyze a more realistic game, one in which different resources have different weaknesses, players have different exploits, and moves occur in secrecy, but they can be detected. Certainly, more advanced and complex games are possible, but the game presented here is more realistic than any other game we know of in the scientific literature. While optimal strategies can be found for simpler games using calculus, case-by-case analysis, or, for stochastic games, Q-learning, our more complex game is more naturally analyzed using the same methods used to study other complex games, such as checkers and chess. We define a simple evaluation function and employ multi-step searches to create strategies. We show that such scenarios can be analyzed, and find that in cases of extreme uncertainty, it is often better to ignore one's opponent's possible moves. Furthermore, we show that a simple evaluation function in a complex game can lead to interesting and nuanced strategies that follow tactics that tend to select moves that are well tuned to the details of the situation and the relative probabilities of success.
Extragalactic Background Light: Measurements and Applications

This review covers the measurements related to the extragalactic background light intensity from γ-rays to radio in the electromagnetic spectrum over 20 decades in wavelength. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) remains the best measured spectrum with an accuracy better than 1%. The measurements related to the cosmic optical background (COB), centred at 1 μm, are impacted by the large zodiacal light associated with interplanetary dust in the inner Solar System. The best measurements of COB come from an indirect technique involving γ-ray spectra of bright blazars with an absorption feature resulting from pair-production off of COB photons. The cosmic infrared background (CIB) peaking at around 100 μm established an energetically important background with an intensity comparable to the optical background. This discovery paved the way for large aperture far-infrared and sub-millimetre observations resulting in the discovery of dusty, starbursting galaxies. Their role in galaxy formation and evolution remains an active area of research in modern-day astrophysics. The extreme UV (EUV) background remains mostly unexplored and will be a challenge to measure due to the high Galactic background and absorption of extragalactic photons by the intergalactic medium at these EUV/soft X-ray energies. We also summarize our understanding of the spatial anisotropies and angular power spectra of intensity fluctuations. We motivate a precise direct measurement of the COB between 0.1 and 5 μm using a small aperture telescope observing either from the outer Solar System, at distances of 5 AU or more, or out of the ecliptic plane. Other future applications include improving our understanding of the background at TeV energies and spectral distortions of CMB and CIB.
Recent advances in enantioselective gold catalysis

Interest in homogeneous gold catalysis has undergone a marked increase. As strong yet air- and moisture-tolerant π-acids, cationic gold(I) complexes have been shown to catalyze diverse transformations of alkenes, alkynes and allenes, opening new opportunities for chemical synthesis. The development of efficient asymmetric variants is required in order to take full advantage of the preparative potential of these transformations. During the last few years, the chemical community has achieved tremendous success in the area. This review highlights the updated progress (2011–2015) in enantioselective gold catalysis. The discussion is classified according to the π-bonds activated by gold(I), in an order of alkynes, allenes and alkenes. Other gold activation modes, such as σ-Lewis acid catalyzed reactions and transformations of diazo compounds are also discussed.
SMOKING AND MORTALITY: NEW EVIDENCE FROM A LONG PANEL

Using data from Framingham Heart Study participants interviewed and examined at frequent intervals over much of their adult lifetime, we discover a relationship between smoking and mortality that differs significantly in magnitude from findings in the medical and epidemiological literature. We attribute the finding of smaller deleterious health impacts of smoking to a failure by previous studies to appropriately account for the non- random nature of lifetime smoking patterns and health histories. We provide causal and consistent estimates of the expected longevity consequences of current smoking, smoking cessation, smoking duration, and smoking experience by jointly modeling individual health heterogeneity, by including supply-side factors such as cigarette advertising and prices, and by allowing for permanent and time-varying unobserved heterogeneity in a flexible yet comprehensive multiple equation joint estimation procedure. We simulate our estimated empirical model under a variety of lifetime smoking patterns, and we compare the resulting mortality differences to the epidemiological literature that treats smoking behavior as random. Our results suggest that difference-in-means statistics significantly overstate the expected longevity loss from various patterns of lifetime smoking. For comparison, the (biased) unconditional difference-in-means in age of death between lifelong smokers and nonsmokers is 9.3 years in our research sample, while simulations from our estimated dynamic model suggest the difference is only 4.3 years. Additionally, our results examine the importance of smoking cessation and relapse avoidance.
Quantum resistant random linear code based public key encryption scheme RLCE

Lattice based encryption schemes and linear code based encryption schemes have received extensive attention in recent years since they have been considered as post-quantum candidate encryption schemes. Though LLL reduction algorithm has been one of the major cryptanalysis techniques for lattice based cryptographic systems, key recovery cryptanalysis techniques for linear code based cryptographic systems are generally scheme specific. In recent years, several important techniques such as Sidelnikov-Shestakov attack, filtration attacks, and algebraic attacks have been developed to crypt-analyze linear code based encryption schemes. Though most of these cryptanalysis techniques are relatively new, they prove to be very powerful and many systems have been broken using them. Thus it is important to design linear code based cryptographic systems that are immune against these attacks. This paper proposes linear code based encryption scheme RLCE which shares many characteristics with random linear codes. Our analysis shows that the scheme RLCE is secure against existing attacks and we hope that the security of the RLCE scheme is equivalent to the hardness of decoding random linear codes. Example parameters are recommended for the scheme RLCE.
CONSTRAINED LINERS IN REVISION THA: MORE PROBLEMS THAN THEY SOLVE – OPPOSES

In the revision situation, there are times where larger heads are just not enough to obtain and maintain stability. The two most relevant times that this is the case is in patients with very lax tissues, or in patients with insufficient or absent soft tissues, especially abductor mechanisms. In addition, in cases where a revision is being performed for dislocation and components looked well-positioned, constrained liners have been extremely beneficial in our hands. Constrained acetabular liners have been available for close to two decades. Two basic types of liners are available. The type first developed by Joint Medical Products was the SROM constrained liner which captured the femoral head with a locking ring in the polyethylene. These liners may have better results with larger head sizes because the hip can be taken through a larger range of motion (with larger head sizes) before the locking ring is stressed. The second type of constraining liner was developed by Osteonics (Stryker). It consisted of a tripolar replacement which is constrained by a locking ring in the outer polyethylene of the device. Indications for constrained liners include patients undergoing primary arthroplasty who are low demand and have dementia or hip muscle weakness or spasticity. Indications for constrained liners in the revision situation include cases with previously failed operations for instability, elderly low demand patients with instability, cases with poor or absent hip musculature, and cases with well positioned acetabular and femoral components and with hip instability. In this last scenario we cement the liners into fixed shells. Our results at average 10-year follow-up in 101 hips, demonstrate a 6% failure of the device. Four hips were revised for acetabular loosening and four hips for femoral loosening. One additional hip was revised for acetabular osteolysis. Considering the difficulty of the cases we consider these results to be quite encouraging. At average 3.9 year follow-up of 31 cases where the liner was cemented into the secure shell only one case failed by dislodgement of the liner and one case by fracture of the locking mechanism. Our experience has led to the following technical recommendation: (1) if cementing the component score the liner and make sure it is contained within the shell (2) avoid inserting the liner into a grossly malpositioned shell (3) avoid positioning the elevated rim of the liner into a position where impingement might occur and (4) avoid placing the shell and constrained liner in cases with massive acetabular allografts unless additional fixation, i.e. cages, are utilized. Especially in the elderly, these liners are our components of choice for many pre-operative and intra-operative cases of instability.
Four loop scattering in the Nambu-Goto theory

We initiate the study of multiloop scattering amplitudes in the Nambu-Goto theory on the worldsheet of a non-critical string. We start with a brute force calculation of two loop four particle scattering. Somewhat surprisingly, even though non-trivial UV counterterms are present at this order, on-shell amplitudes remain polynomial in the momenta of colliding particles. We show that this can be understood as a consequence of existence of certain close by (semi)integrable models. Furthermore, these arguments can be extended to obtain the answer for three and four loop scattering, bypassing the brute force calculation. The resulting amplitudes develop non-polynomial (logarithmic) dependence on the momenta starting at three loops.
Weakly Supervised Localization Using Deep Feature Maps

Object localization is an important computer vision problem with a variety of applications. The lack of large scale object-level annotations and the relative abundance of image-level labels makes a compelling case for weak supervision in the object localization task. Deep Convolutional Neural Networks are a class of state-of-the-art methods for the related problem of object recognition. In this paper, we describe a novel object localization algorithm which uses classification networks trained on only image labels. This weakly supervised method leverages local spatial and semantic patterns captured in the convolutional layers of classification networks. We propose an efficient beam search based approach to detect and localize multiple objects in images. The proposed method significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art in standard object localization data-sets.
Design of Binary Quantizers for Distributed Detection Under Secrecy Constraints

In this paper, we investigate the design of distributed detection networks in the presence of an eavesdropper (Eve). We consider the problem of designing binary sensor quantizers that maximize the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence at the fusion center (FC), when subject to a tolerable constraint on the KL divergence at Eve. We assume that the channels between the sensors and the FC (likewise the channels between the sensors and the Eve) are modeled as binary symmetric channels (BSCs). In the case of i.i.d. received symbols at both the FC and Eve, we prove that the structure of the optimal binary quantizers is a likelihood ratio test (LRT). We also present an algorithm to find the threshold of the optimal LRT, and illustrate it for the case of Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) observation models at the sensors. In the case of non-i.i.d. received symbols at both FC and Eve, we propose a dynamic-programming based algorithm to find efficient quantizers at the sensors. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed network.
Vom Piezo zum Messsystem

1959 grundete Hans Conrad Sonderegger in der Schweiz die Kistler Instrumente AG. Schon im Jahr 1957 hatten Walter P. Kistler und Hans Conrad Sonderegger in den USA die Kistler Instrument Corp. ins Leben gerufen und Hans Conrad Sonderegger in der Schweiz die Firma Kistler Instruments gegrundet. 1958 stellte Kistler den ersten universellen Miniatur-Drucksensor vor. In der Folgezeit setzte Kistler mit Innovationen Meilensteine auf dem Gebiet der Sensortechnik und baute die weltweite Prasenz aus. Im Jubilaumsjahr 2009 erganzt die Kistler Gruppe ihr Produktespektrum mit der neuen KiBox, dem Indiziersystem speziell fur den mobilen Einsatz im Fahrzeug.
Study Of Fiber Composite Failure Criterion

With a recently developed numerical technique, we have investigated failure processes in real fiber composites. This technique utilizes 3D lattice Green’s functions to calculate load transfer from broken to unbroken fibers, and also includes the important effects of fiber/matrix sliding. It is found that the failure processes are more complex than previously thought: The fibers that break or slide are not necessarily located around the largest defect cluster. Rather, the breaking/sliding fibers accumulate, form several large clusters, coalesce and finally cause the fiber composite to fail. Only in some cases does one large defect dominate the damage evolution. Based on our observations of the irregular evolution of the damage, a simple model is developed to describe these different failure modes, and the failure criterion of the fiber composite is also discussed.
Quantum-Optical Coherence Tomography with Collinear Entangled Photons

We demonstrate the implementation of collinear entangled photons for Quantum-Optical Coherence Tomography using a Michelson interferometer. Compared to the standard configuration, based on the Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer, our method offers robustness and adaptability.
Lewis Acidity of Bis(perfluorocatecholato)silane: Aldehyde Hydrosilylation Catalyzed by a Neutral Silicon Compound.

Bis(perfluorocatecholato)silane Si(catF)2 was prepared, and stoichiometric binding to Lewis bases was demonstrated with fluoride, triethylphosphine oxide, and N,N′-diisopropylbenzamide. The potent Lewis acidity of Si(catF)2 was suggested from catalytic hydrosilylation and silylcyanation reactions with aldehydes. Mechanistic studies of hydrosilylation using an optically active silane substrate, R-(+)-methyl-(1-naphthyl)phenylsilane, proceeded with predominant stereochemical retention at silicon, consistent with a carbonyl activation pathway. The enantiospecificity was dependent on solvent and salt effects, with increasing solvent polarity or addition of NBu4BArF4 leading to a diminished enantiomeric ratio. The medium effects are consistent with an ionic mechanism, wherein hydride transfer occurs prior to silicon–oxygen bond formation.
Palladium-Catalyzed α,β-Dehydrogenation of Esters and Nitriles

A highly practical and general palladium-catalyzed methodology for the α,β-dehydrogenation of esters and nitriles is reported. Generation of a zinc enolate or (cyanoalkyl)zinc species followed by the addition of an allyl oxidant and a palladium catalyst results in synthetically useful yields of α,β-unsaturated esters, lactones, and nitriles. Preliminary mechanistic investigations are consistent with reversible β-hydride elimination and turnover-limiting, propene-forming reductive elimination.
From Commitment to Compliance: Enforceability of Remedial Orders of African Human Rights Bodies

Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This non-judicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability of international judgments. The article argues that empowering domestic courts to have jurisdiction over States’ noncompliance with international judgments may be a plausible solution to facilitate enforcement of the international tribunals’ decisions. To this end, the article concludes with a suggestion of legal reforms of both continental and domestic laws.
Emergency medical service, nursing, and physician providers’ perspectives on delirium identification and management

Purpose of the study The study objective was to understand providers' perceptions regarding identifying and treating older adults with delirium, a common complication of acute illness in persons with dementia, in the pre-hospital and emergency department environments. Design and methods The authors conducted structured focus group interviews with separate groups of emergency medical services staff, emergency nurses, and emergency physicians. Recordings of each session were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for themes with representative supporting quotations identified. Results Providers shared that the busy emergency department environment was the largest challenge to delirium recognition and treatment. When describing delirium, participants frequently detailed hyperactive features of delirium, rather than hypoactive features. Participants shared that they employed no clear diagnostic strategy for identifying the condition and that they used heterogeneous approaches to treat the condition. To improve care for older adults with delirium, emergency nurses identified the need for more training around the management of the condition. Emergency medical services providers identified the need for more support in managing agitated patients when in transport to the hospital and more guidance from emergency physicians on what information to collect from the patient's home environment. Emergency physicians felt that delirium care would be improved if they could have baseline mental status data on their patients and if they had access to a simple, accurate diagnostic tool for the condition. Implications Emergency medical services providers, emergency nurses, and emergency physicians frequently encounter delirious patients, but do not employ clear diagnostic strategies for identifying the condition and have varying levels of comfort in managing the condition. Clear steps should be taken to improve delirium care in the emergency department including the development of mechanisms to communicate patients' baseline mental status, the adoption of a systematized approach to recognizing delirium, and the institution of a standardized method to treat the condition when identified.
Highly tunable elastic dielectric metasurface lenses

Dielectric metasurfaces are two-dimensional structures composed of nano-scatterers that manipulate the phase and polarization of optical waves with subwavelength spatial resolution, thus enabling ultra-thin components for free-space optics. While high performance devices with various functionalities, including some that are difficult to achieve using conventional optical setups have been shown, most demonstrated components have fixed parameters. Here, we demonstrate highly tunable dielectric metasurface devices based on subwavelength thick silicon nano-posts encapsulated in a thin transparent elastic polymer. As proof of concept, we demonstrate a metasurface microlens operating at 915 nm, with focal distance tuning from 600 μm to 1400 μm (over 952 diopters change in optical power) through radial strain, while maintaining a diffraction limited focus and a focusing efficiency above 50%. The demonstrated tunable metasurface concept is highly versatile for developing ultra-slim, multi-functional and tunable optical devices with widespread applications ranging from consumer electronics to medical devices and optical communications.
Phase-Resolved Wave Field Simulation Calibration of Sea Surface Reconstruction Using Noncoherent Marine Radar

AbstractThe possibility of reconstructing sea surface wave fields from a noncoherent X-band marine radar return has much potential for maritime operations and ocean engineering. The existing reconstruction method extracts the signal associated with gravity waves that satisfy the dispersion relationship. The process involves parameters related to how the radar signal is modulated by waves of different lengths, propagation directions, amplitudes, and phases. In the absence of independent wave measurements, these reconstruction parameters cannot be rationally adjusted according to wave field conditions, and the predictions are generally of uneven accuracy and reliability. A new reconstruction method based on concurrent phase-resolved wave field simulations is proposed. By maximizing the correlation between the reconstructed and simulated wave fields over time, optimal values of the reconstruction parameters are obtained that are found to vary appreciably with the wave field properties and with the location a...
Is Most Published Research Really False

There has been an increasing concern in both the scientific and lay communities that most published medical findings are false. But what does it mean to be false? Here we describe the range of definitions of false discoveries in the scientific literature. We summarize the philosophical, statistical, and experimental evidence for each type of false discovery. We discuss common underpinning problems with the scientific and data analytic practices and point to tools and behaviors that can be implemented to reduce the problems with published scientific results.
Minimal ingredients for orbital-texture switches at Dirac points in strong spin–orbit coupled materials

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements on strong spin–orbit coupled materials have shown an in-plane orbital-texture switch at their respective Dirac points, regardless of whether they are topological insulators or ‘trivial’ Rashba materials. This feature has also been demonstrated in a few materials (Bi2Se3, Bi2Te3 and BiTeI) though DFT calculations. Here we present a minimal orbital-derived tight binding model to calculate the electron wavefunction in a two-dimensional crystal lattice. We show that the orbital components of the wavefunction demonstrate an orbital-texture switch in addition to the usual spin switch seen in spin polarised bands. This orbital-texture switch is determined by the existence of three main properties: local or global inversion symmetry breaking, strong spin–orbit coupling and non-local physics (the electrons are on a lattice). Using our model, we demonstrate that the orbital-texture switch is ubiquitous and to be expected in many real systems. The orbital hybridisation of the bands is the key aspect for understanding the unique wavefunction properties of these materials, and this minimal model helps to establish the quantum perturbations that drive these hybridisations. For materials with inherent strong spin-orbit coupling (SOC), the conventional spin picture does not provide a complete description of the Dirac states as the orbital components are usually overlooked. Orbital-selective photoemission observations and theoretical calculations have recently confirmed the presence of orbital texture switch in certain materials. Here Waugh, Zunger, and Dessau from University of Colorado Boulder together with their co-workers develop a model to calculate the electronic structure and understand the underlying physics. This model not only shows the orbital texture switch, but predicts that this feature is ubiquitous and present in many systems with strong SOC and broken inversion symmetry. The orbital hybridization holds the key to understanding the unique wavefunction properties, and this model serves to establish the quantum perturbations that drive these hybridizations.
Determination of ubiquitin fitness landscapes under different chemical stresses in a classroom setting

Ubiquitin is essential for eukaryotic life and varies in only 3 amino acid positions between yeast and humans. However, recent deep sequencing studies indicate that ubiquitin is highly tolerant to single mutations. We hypothesized that this tolerance would be reduced by chemically induced physiologic perturbations. To test this hypothesis, a class of first year UCSF graduate students employed deep mutational scanning to determine the fitness landscape of all possible single residue mutations in the presence of five different small molecule perturbations. These perturbations uncover 'shared sensitized positions' localized to areas around the hydrophobic patch and the C-terminus. In addition, we identified perturbation specific effects such as a sensitization of His68 in HU and a tolerance to mutation at Lys63 in DTT. Our data show how chemical stresses can reduce buffering effects in the ubiquitin proteasome system. Finally, this study demonstrates the potential of lab-based interdisciplinary graduate curriculum.
A simple approach to building ensembles of Naive Bayesian classifiers for word sense disambiguation

This paper presents a corpus-based approach to word sense disambiguation that builds an ensemble of Naive Bayesian classifiers, each of which is based on lexical features that represent co-occurring words in varying sized windows of context. Despite the simplicity of this approach, empirical results disambiguating the widely studied nouns line and interest show that such an ensemble achieves accuracy rivaling the best previously published results.
A novel stereoselective [8+2] double cycloaddition route to hydronaphthalene ring systems.

Abstract Substituted hydronaphthalenes where each of the ten carbons of the two-ring system contains a functionality were obtained through a tandem [8+2] cycloaddition and base-catalyzed rearrangement process using dienylfurans and electron-deficient alkynes. If the [8+2] process is conducted under solvent-free conditions the process could be conducted in a single reaction flask without isolation of the chromatographically sensitive [8+2] cycloadducts. A mechanism involving base catalyzed alkene positional isomerization followed by disrotatory electrocyclic ring closure was proposed for the key reaction step that converts [8+2] cycloadducts to hydronaphthalenes. The products undergo selective ring opening–isomerization processes upon treatment with Lewis acids.
Direct Observation of Intermediates Involved in the Interruption of the Bischler–Napieralski Reaction

The first mechanistic investigation of electrophilic amide activation of α,α-disubstituted tertiary lactams and the direct observation of key intermediates by in situ FTIR, 1H, 13C, and 19F NMR in our interrupted Bischler–Napieralski-based synthetic strategy to the aspidosperma alkaloids, including a complex tetracyclic diiminium ion, is discussed. The reactivity of a wide range of pyridines with trifluoromethanesulfonic anhydride was systematically examined, and characteristic IR absorption bands for the corresponding N-trifluoromethanesulfonylated pyridinium trifluoromethanesulfonates were assigned. The reversible formation of diiminium ether intermediates was studied, providing insight into divergent mechanistic pathways as a function of the steric environment of the amide substrate and stoichiometry of reagents. Importantly, when considering base additives during electrophilic amide activation, more hindered α-quaternary tertiary lactams require the use of non-nucleophilic pyridine additives in order ...
Rhodium-Catalyzed Interconversion of Quinolinyl Ketones with Boronic Acids via C–C Bond Activation

A rhodium-catalyzed cross-coupling of aryl and aliphatic quinolinyl ketones with boronic acids has been developed. Proceeding via quinoline-directed carbon–carbon σ bond activation, the transformation demonstrates tolerance of a range of functional groups on both the ketone and aryl boronic acid substrates, providing good to excellent yields of the new ketones, particularly those containing electron-withdrawing substituents. Catalyst reactivity is dependent on quinolinyl ketone substrates, with alkyl ketones requiring Rh(PPh3)3Cl instead of the more reactive [Rh(C2H4)2Cl]2. With the use of K2CO3 as an additive, methyl boronic acid is also a competent substrate, giving rise to an unprecedented methylation technique.