AN INTRODUCTION TO RS485

RS 485 specification has been discussed in the present Technical Reports

Improving SPIHT-based Compression of Volumetric Medical Data

Volumetric medical data (CT,MR) are useful tools for diagnostic investigation however their usage may be made diffcult because of the amount of data to store or because of the duration of communication over a limited capacity channel. In order to code such information sources we present a progressive three dimensional image compression algorithm based on zerotree wavelet coder with arithmetic coding. We make use of a 3D separable biorthogonal wavelet transform and we extend the zerotree SPIHT algorithm to three dimensions. Moreover we propose some improvements to the SPIHT encoder in order to obtain a better rate distortion performance without increasing the computational complexity. Finally we propose an efficient context-based adaptive arithmetic coding which eliminates high order redundancy. The results obtained on progressive coding of a test CT volume are better than those presented in recent similar works both for the mean PSNR on the whole volume and for the PSNR homogeneity between various slices

Radiation and magnetic field effects on new semiconductor power devices for HL-LHC experiments

The radiation hardness of commercial Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride power MOSFETs is presented in this paper, for Total Ionizing Dose effects and Single Event Effects, under gamma, neutrons, protons and heavy ions. Similar tests are discussed for commercial DC-DC converters, also tested in operation under magnetic field

Derivation of linear elasticity for a general class of atomistic energies

The purpose of this paper is the derivation, in the framework of Gamma-convergence, of linear elastic continuum theories from a general class of atomistic models, in the regime of small deformations. Existing results are available only in the special case of one-well potentials accounting for very short interactions. We consider here the general case of multi-well potentials accounting for interactions of finite but arbitrarily long range. The extension to this setting requires a novel idea for the proof of the Gamma-convergence which is interesting in its own right and potentially relevant in other applications

High B test of a commercial step-down Point of Load for LHC experiments

The performance in magnetic field (B-field) of the commercial DC-DC converter LTM8033, from Linear Technology, has been evaluated. The tests have been carried out at the Laboratorio Acceleratori e Superconduttivit\ue0 Applicata (LASA), in Milan (Italy), on December 2013 and the experimental results are here presented and discussed. Their ability to operate in hostile environment is particularly interesting for physics experiments where the presence of radiation and strong B field make electronic devices challenged to function . In particular, in this article the operation in high B-field environment will be investigated and discussed

Predicting the Electronic Density Response of Condensed-Phase Systems to Electric Field Perturbations

We present a local and transferable machine learning approach capable of predicting the real-space density response of both molecules and periodic systems to external homogeneous electric fields. The new method, SALTER, builds on the Symmetry-Adapted Gaussian Process Regression SALTED framework. SALTER requires only a small, but necessary, modification to the descriptors used to represent the atomic environments. We present the performance of the method on isolated water molecules, bulk water and a naphthalene crystal. Root mean square errors of the predicted density response lie at or below 10% with barely more than 100 training structures. Derived quantities, such as polarizability tensors and even Raman spectra further derived from these tensors show a good agreement with those calculated directly from quantum mechanical methods. Therefore, SALTER shows excellent performance when predicting derived quantities, while retaining all of the information contained in the full electronic response. This method is thus capable of learning vector fields in a chemical context and serves as a landmark for further developments.Comment: Main text: 7 pages, 5 figures. SI: 5 pages, 4 figure

Dominance relationships in a family pack of captive arctic wolves (Canis lupus arctos): The influence of competition for food, age and sex

Background. Dominance is one of the most pervasive concepts in the study of wolf social behaviour but recently its validity has been questioned. For some authors, the bonds between members of wolf families are better described as parent-offspring relationships and the concept of dominance should be used just to evaluate the social dynamics of non-familial captive pack members (e.g., Mech & Cluff, 2010). However, there is a dearth of studies investigating dominance relationships and its correlates in wolf family packs. Methods. Here, we applied a combination of the most commonly used quantitative methods to evaluate the dominance relationships in a captive family pack of 19 Arctic wolves. Results. We found a significant linear and completely transitive hierarchy based on the direction of submissive behaviours and found that dominance relationships were not influenced by the competitive contexts (feeding vs. non-feeding context). A significant linear hierarchy also emerges amongst siblings once the breeding pair (the two top-ranking individuals) is removed from analyses. Furthermore, results suggest that wolves may use greeting behaviour as a formal signal of subordination. Whereas older wolves were mostly dominant over younger ones, no clear effect of sex was found. However, frequency of agonistic (submissive, dominant and aggressive) behaviours was higher between female-female and male-male dyads than female-male dyads and sex-separated linear hierarchies showed a stronger linearity than the mixed one. Furthermore, dominance status was conveyed through different behavioural categories during intra-sexual and inter-sexual interactions. Discussion. Current results highlight the importance of applying a systematic methodology considering the individuals' age and sex when evaluating the hierarchical structure of a social group. Moreover, they confirm the validity of the concept of dominance relationships in describing the social bonds within a family pack of captive wolves