Circular 20

Since fanning in Alaska first began and especially since dairy farming became the primary agricultural industry, there has existed a need for hardy legumes which would survive Alaska winters and produce satisfactory yields of high quality forage. To meet this need hundreds of legume species and strains have been introduced during the past 40 or more years. Almost all have lacked the necessary hardiness or have not been satisfactory agronomically. The release of Alaskland red clover in the spring of 1953 is the first time a hardy legume has been made available to growers in Alaska.Cooperating with the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Administratio

Is screening urinalysis in children worthwhile?

Screening urinalysis in asymptomatic children has not been shown to be beneficial (strength of recommendation: B; based on extrapolation from 1 meta-analysis). It is unlikely to be cost-effective and should be discontinued. While random urinalyses can be used for case finding of glucosuria, hematuria, pyuria, bacteriuria, and proteinuria, the routine use of screening urinalysis in asymptomatic patients is not likely to be an effective strategy

Initial Results of a Silicon Sensor Irradiation Study for ILC Extreme Forward Calorimetry

Detectors proposed for the International Linear Collider (ILC) incorporate a tungsten sampling calorimeter (`BeamCal') intended to reconstruct showers of electrons, positrons and photons that emerge from the interaction point of the collider with angles between 5 and 50 milliradians. For the innermost radius of this calorimeter, radiation doses at shower-max are expected to reach 100 MRad per year, primarily due to minimum-ionizing electrons and positrons that arise in the induced electromagnetic showers of e+e- `beamstrahlung' pairs produced in the ILC beam-beam interaction. However, radiation damage to calorimeter sensors may be dominated by hadrons induced by nuclear interactions of shower photons, which are much more likely to contribute to the non-ionizing energy loss that has been observed to damage sensors exposed to hadronic radiation. We report here on the results of SLAC Experiment T-506, for which several different types of silicon diode sensors were exposed to doses of radiation induced by showering electrons of energy 3.5-10.6 GeV. By embedding the sensor under irradiation within a tungsten radiator, the exposure incorporated hadronic species that would potentially contribute to the degradation of a sensor mounted in a precision sampling calorimeter. Depending on sensor technology, efficient charge collection was observed for doses as large as 220 MRad.Comment: Talk presented at the International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders (LCWS13), Tokyo, Japan, 11-15 November 201

Convective Fingering of an Autocatalytic Reaction Front

We report experimental observations of the convection-driven fingering instability of an iodate-arsenous acid chemical reaction front. The front propagated upward in a vertical slab; the thickness of the slab was varied to control the degree of instability. We observed the onset and subsequent nonlinear evolution of the fingers, which were made visible by a {\it p}H indicator. We measured the spacing of the fingers during their initial stages and compared this to the wavelength of the fastest growing linear mode predicted by the stability analysis of Huang {\it et. al.} [{\it Phys. Rev. E}, {\bf 48}, 4378 (1993), and unpublished]. We find agreement with the thickness dependence predicted by the theory.Comment: 11 pages, RevTex with 3 eps figures. To be published in Phys Rev E, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Scalable architectures for platform-as-a-service clouds: performance and cost analysis

Scalability is a significant feature of cloud computing, which ad-dresses to increase or decrease the capacities of allocated virtual resources at application, platform, database and infrastructure level on demand. We investigate scalable architecture solutions for cloud PaaS that allow services to utilize the resources dynamically and effectively without directly affecting users. We have implemented scalable architectures with different session state management solutions, deploying an online shopping cart application in a PaaS solution, and measuring the performance and cost under three server-side session state providers: Caching, SQL database and NoSQL database. A commercial solution with its supporting state management components has been used. Particularly when re-architecting software for the cloud, the trade-off between performance, scalability and cost implications needs to be discussed

Orthogonal variability modeling to support multi-cloud application configuration

Cloud service providers benefit from a vast majority of customers due to variability and making profit from commonalities between the cloud services that they provide. Recently, application configuration dimensions has been increased dramatically due to multi-tenant, multi-device and multi-cloud paradigm. This challenges the configuration and customization of cloud-based software that are typically offered as a service due to the intrinsic variability. In this paper, we present a model-driven approach based on variability models originating from the software product line community to handle such multi-dimensional variability in the cloud. We exploit orthogonal variability models to systematically manage and create tenant-specific configuration and customizations. We also demonstrate how such variability models can be utilized to take into account the already deployed application parts to enable harmonized deployments for new tenants in a multi-cloud setting. The approach considers application functional and non-functional requirements to provide a set of valid multi-cloud configurations. We illustrate our approach through a case study

Local magnetism in MnSiPt rules the chemical bond

A crystal structure can be understood as a result of bonding interactions (covalent, ionic, van der Waals, etc.) between the constituting atoms. If the forces caused by these interactions are equilibrated, the so-stabilized crystal structure should have the lowest energy. In such an atomic configuration, additional weaker atomic interactions may further reduce the total energy, influencing the final atomic arrangement. Indeed, in the intermetallic compound MnSiPt, a 3D framework is formed by polar covalent bonds between Mn, Si, and Pt atoms. Without taking into account the local spin polarization of manganese atoms, they would form Mn–Mn bonds within the framework. Surprisingly, the local magnetic moments of manganese prevent the formation of Mn–Mn bonds, thus changing decisively and significantly the final atomic arrangement.Among intermetallic compounds, ternary phases with the simple stoichiometric ratio 1:1:1 form one of the largest families. More than 15 structural patterns have been observed for several hundred compounds constituting this group. This, on first glance unexpected, finding is a consequence of the complex mechanism of chemical bonding in intermetallic structures, allowing for large diversity. Their formation process can be understood based on a hierarchy of energy scales: The main share is contributed by covalent and ionic interactions in accordance with the electronic needs of the participating elements. However, smaller additional atomic interactions may still tip the scales. Here, we demonstrate that the local spin polarization of paramagnetic manganese in the new compound MnSiPt rules the adopted TiNiSi-type crystal structure. Combining a thorough experimental characterization with a theoretical analysis of the energy landscape and the chemical bonding of MnSiPt, we show that the paramagnetism of the Mn atoms suppresses the formation of Mn–Mn bonds, deciding between competing crystal structures