Design of a strain-gage probe

Strain-gage spacer probe uses the deflection of a leaf spring to measure strain in a long, slender beam nondestructively. The selected gage is of the smallest practical size, as thin as possible and yet of a standard type

Chemical composition of the mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus (Bull.) Murill.

Laetiporus sulphureus (chicken of the woods) is a wood decaying mushroom with positive medicinal and biological effects. The aim of this study was to determine its chemical composition including the main organic components (protein, fat, fibre, and ash contents, different protein fractions, the free amino acid level, soluble oligo- and polysaccharides, phenolics), the in vitro digestibility, the free radical scavenging activity, and twenty mineral elements.Our data demonstrate the characteristic in general valuable chemical composition of the mushroom Laetiporus sulphureus. Protein content in fruiting bodies is not too high (10.6% d.m.), but the biological value (in vitro digestibility, rate of protein fractions, free amino acid content, etc.) is good (including fat and energy levels). Occurrence of “bioactive” components (phenolics, soluble oligo- and polysaccharides) and the measured free radical scavenging activity are similar to these parameters in Pleurotus (oyster) species. Potassium and phosphorus contents are remarkable (28 940 mg kg−1 d.m. and 4890 mg kg−1 d.m., respectively); levels of some poisonous microelements (As, Cd, Cr) are very low or undetectable. Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) is not only a suitable species for human consumption, but can be a new cultivable mushroom of valuable bioactive substances

TensorFlow Doing HPC

TensorFlow is a popular emerging open-source programming framework supporting the execution of distributed applications on heterogeneous hardware. While TensorFlow has been initially designed for developing Machine Learning (ML) applications, in fact TensorFlow aims at supporting the development of a much broader range of application kinds that are outside the ML domain and can possibly include HPC applications. However, very few experiments have been conducted to evaluate TensorFlow performance when running HPC workloads on supercomputers. This work addresses this lack by designing four traditional HPC benchmark applications: STREAM, matrix-matrix multiply, Conjugate Gradient (CG) solver and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). We analyze their performance on two supercomputers with accelerators and evaluate the potential of TensorFlow for developing HPC applications. Our tests show that TensorFlow can fully take advantage of high performance networks and accelerators on supercomputers. Running our TensorFlow STREAM benchmark, we obtain over 50% of theoretical communication bandwidth on our testing platform. We find an approximately 2x, 1.7x and 1.8x performance improvement when increasing the number of GPUs from two to four in the matrix-matrix multiply, CG and FFT applications respectively. All our performance results demonstrate that TensorFlow has high potential of emerging also as HPC programming framework for heterogeneous supercomputers.Comment: Accepted for publication at The Ninth International Workshop on Accelerators and Hybrid Exascale Systems (AsHES'19

Electrostatic gating of metallic and insulating phases in SmNiO3 ultrathin films

The correlated electron system SmNiO3 exhibits a metal-insulator phase transition at 130 {\deg}C. Using an ionic liquid as an electric double layer (EDL) gate on three-terminal ultrathin SmNiO3 devices, we investigate gate control of the channel resistance and transition temperature. Resistance reduction is observed across both insulating and metallic phases with ~25% modulation at room temperature. We show that resistance modulation is predominantly due to electrostatic charge accumulation and not electrochemical doping by control experiments in inert and air en-vironments. We model the resistance behavior and estimate the accumulated sheet density (~1-2 x 10^14 cm^-2) and EDL capacitance (~12 {\mu}F/cm^2)

Pulse shape analysis in segmented detectors as a technique for background reduction in Ge double-beta decay experiments

The need to understand and reject backgrounds in Ge-diode detector double-beta decay experiments has given rise to the development of pulse shape analysis in such detectors to discern single-site energy deposits from multiple-site deposits. Here, we extend this analysis to segmented Ge detectors to study the effectiveness of combining segmentation with pulse shape analysis to identify the multiplicity of the energy deposits.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figures, will be submitted to NI

Water exchange at a hydrated platinum electrode is rare and collective

We use molecular dynamics simulations to study the exchange kinetics of water molecules at a model metal electrode surface -- exchange between water molecules in the bulk liquid and water molecules bound to the metal. This process is a rare event, with a mean residence time of a bound water of about 40 ns for the model we consider. With analysis borrowed from the techniques of rare-event sampling, we show how this exchange or desorption is controlled by (1) reorganization of the hydrogen bond network within the adlayer of bound water molecules, and by (2) interfacial density fluctuations of the bulk liquid adjacent to the adlayer. We define collective coordinates that describe the desorption mechanism. Spatial and temporal correlations associated with a single event extend over nanometers and tens of picoseconds.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure

Chemical analysis of king oyster mushroom (Pleurotus eryngii) fruitbodies

King oyster mushroom (Pleurotus eryngii) is a worldwide cultivated mushroom of appreciated nutritional and medicinal quality. Aims of these investigations were to give new comparative data for the better evaluation of P. eryngii. Results of our investigations can be summarized as follows: P. eryngii has higher (crude protein, crude fat) or at least the same concentrations (chitin and total carbohydrate) of organic nutritive components than the common cultivated Pleurotus hybrid (‘HK-35’). Regarding the classical protein fractions: albumins are the highest content in both mushrooms, but the quantity and the proportion in P. eryngii is better than in ‘HK-35’ hybrid. Occurrence and proportion of protein fractions is more valuable in P. eryngii, while the NPN contents of both mushrooms are the same. The investigated soluble oligo- and polysaccharides were present in high amounts in both mushrooms, but the free radical scavenging activity seems to be markedly higher in king oyster mushroom, making it more valuable. Mineral compositions of both species are similarly beneficial, but P. eryngii has basically higher P and lower K levels. More intensive cultivation and use of P. eryngii is clearly recommended

Staging for distant metastases in operable breast cancer: a suggested expansion of the ESMO guideline recommendation for staging imaging of node-negative, hormonal receptor-negative disease

We evaluated the impact of staging procedures to detect asymptomatic distant metastases (DM) in the management of women with operable invasive breast cancer (BC, entire cohort: n = 866). Out of 472 patients with lymph node (LN)-negative disease (pN0), DM were found in four cases (detection rate: 0.8%). All four patients presented with established risk factors: hormone receptor (HR)-negative status, HER2-positive status, n = 3; ‘triple-negative' disease, n = 1. Considering the subgroup of LN-negative patients whose tumors showed the risk factor ‘negative HR status' (n = 66), the detection rate of DM was 6%. The detection rates of DM in higher pN categories were as follows: pN1:1.7%; pN2:9.5%; pN3:13.5%. We generally support the international guidelines, including those published by the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) which emphasize that patients with early-stage BC do not profit from radiological staging for the detection of DM and recommend refraining from this. However, we would expand these guidelines and propose that screening should be carried out in node-negative patients whose tumors show established tumor-related risk factors (e.g. HR-negative and HER2-positive status), since in this particular subcohort, the detection rate of DM is with 6% similarly high as that of patients with four to nine positive LN

Energy-efficiency improvements for optical access

This article discusses novel approaches to improve energy efficiency of different optical access technologies, including time division multiplexing passive optical network (TDM-PON), time and wavelength division multiplexing PON (TWDM-PON), point-to-point (PTP) access network, wavelength division multiplexing PON (WDM-PON), and orthogonal frequency division multiple access PON (OFDMA-PON). These approaches include cyclic sleep mode, energy-efficient bit interleaving protocol, power reduction at component level, or frequency band selection. Depending on the target optical access technology, one or a combination of different approaches can be applied