Antimicrobial Fe 2 O 3 -CuO-P 2 O 5 glasses

Glasses with high antimicrobial efficacy were developed in the Fe2O3-CuO-P2O5 ternary system to mitigate fomite-mediated transmission of infectious diseases in high-risk settings such as hospitals, daycares, and nursing homes. Binary CuO-P2O5 glasses were not durable enough for use as high touch point articles, so Fe2O3 was added to the compositions to increase the chemical durability. The amount of Cu leachate decreased by at least 3 orders of magnitude when Fe2O3 was increased from 0 to 13.1 mol%. At the highest Fe2O3 contents and corresponding highest durability, the glass was no longer able to pass a test of antimicrobial efficacy with 5 log kill for all other compositions. Ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations showed increasing bridging oxygen species at the expense of non-bridging oxygen species with the increase in Fe2O3 content, showing that the glasses exhibited increased chemical durability because they were more interconnected and structurally bound. Experimental results with glasses at fixed CuO and decreasing Fe2O3 confirmed that Fe2O3 content (not CuO) controlled the Cu release rate and, thus, the antimicrobial efficacy of the glasses. The significance of the oxidation state of the leached Cu was overwhelmed by the importance of the amount of Cu leachate

Tax Smoothing Implications of the Federal Debt Paydown

Tax, Tax Smoothing Implications, Federal Debt, Federal Debt Paydown, macroeconomics

Clustering and Sharing Incentives in BitTorrent Systems

Peer-to-peer protocols play an increasingly instrumental role in Internet content distribution. Consequently, it is important to gain a full understanding of how these protocols behave in practice and how their parameters impact overall performance. We present the first experimental investigation of the peer selection strategy of the popular BitTorrent protocol in an instrumented private torrent. By observing the decisions of more than 40 nodes, we validate three BitTorrent properties that, though widely believed to hold, have not been demonstrated experimentally. These include the clustering of similar-bandwidth peers, the effectiveness of BitTorrent's sharing incentives, and the peers' high average upload utilization. In addition, our results show that BitTorrent's new choking algorithm in seed state provides uniform service to all peers, and that an underprovisioned initial seed leads to the absence of peer clustering and less effective sharing incentives. Based on our observations, we provide guidelines for seed provisioning by content providers, and discuss a tracker protocol extension that addresses an identified limitation of the protocol

Evaluation de couches barrières biocompatibles pour l’encapsulation de dispositifs médicaux microélectroniques

Miniaturized medical devices are becoming increasingly adopted by doctors and patients because they enable new treatment and monitoring capabilities, minimally invasive surgery, improved portability and ease of use. Recent examples include micro pacemakers, micro cochlear implants and ex-situ micro glucose sensors. However, implantable micro devices employing packaging technologies other than metallic enclosures are yet to be seen. Physiological monitors such as in-situ pressure sensors and BioMEMS could profit significantly from advances in thin barrier films for corrosion protection of silicon micro devices. Coating films that stop the diffusion and permeation of harmful substances are necessary to protect both the patient and the micro device. Ceramic films deposited by chemical vapor deposition techniques are good candidates for this task due to their low permeability to gases, low chemical reactivity and high conformality. However, few studies are available about the corrosion protection offered by biocompatible coatings to microelectronic devices in representative biological environments.Ten materials were selected in this thesis after a bibliographic study: Al2O3, BN, DLC, HfO2, SiC, SiN, SiO2, SiOC, TiO2 and ZnO. Ultra-thin films of these materials (5-100 nm) were deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) or atomic layer deposition (ALD) on substrates commonly found in electronic micro devices: crystalline silicon, copper, tungsten nitride and polyimide. In vitro cytotoxicity tests and degradation tests were performed for several weeks at different temperatures in Phosphate Buffer Saline (PBS) and NaCl supplemented with 10% Fetal Bovine Serum (NaCl/FBS). Changes in thickness and chemical composition were monitored by VASE, XPS and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (TOF-SIMS). It was found that SiO2 and SiN films (generally used for protection in the microelectronics industry) are not stable in PBS and NaCl/FBS at 37°C, even though they act as good hermetic barriers. Al2O3 showed very good stability in saline solution and excellent behavior as gas barrier, but it was rapidly dissolved in NaCl/FBS.In contrast, films of DLC, SiOC and TiO2 showed very low chemical reactivity in both mediums. Finally, it was shown that multilayers of TiO2 on Al2O3 offer the best performance as hermetic and diffusion barriers for corrosion protection of silicon micro systems in saline environments.Les dispositifs médicaux miniaturisés sont de plus en plus répandus dans le monde médical, car ils offrent de nouvelles opportunités de traitement et de surveillance. La miniaturisation des systèmes permet notamment une chirurgie minimalement invasive, une portabilité améliorée et une facilité d'utilisation. Parmi les exemples on peut mentionner les micro-stimulateurs cardiaques, les micro-implants cochléaires et les micro-capteurs ex-situ de glucose. Cependant, les micro-dispositifs implantables qui utilisent des technologies d'assemblage autres que les boîtiers métalliques sont encore à découvrir. La surveillance de paramètres physiologiques à l'aide de capteurs in-situ de pression et BioMEMS pourraient bénéficier des progrès faits sur les études d'encapsulation en couche mince destinées à protéger les micro-dispositifs de silicium contre la corrosion. En effet, une barrière qui empêche la diffusion et la pénétration des substances nocives est indispensable pour protéger à la fois le patient et le micro-dispositif. Les couches minces céramiques déposées par des procédés chimiques en phase vapeur sont de bons candidats grâce à leurs faibles perméabilités aux gazes, faibles réactivités chimique et conformités de dépôt élevées. Cependant, dans des milieux biologiques représentatifs du corps humain, peu d'études ont été réalisées dans le domaine de la protection des dispositifs microélectroniques contre la corrosion.Au cours de cette thèse, dix matériaux, choisis à l'issue d'une étude bibliographique, ont été étudiés: Al2O3, BN, DLC, HfO2, SiC, SiN, SiO2, SiOC, TiO2 et ZnO. Des couches ultrafines de ces matériaux (de 5 à 100 nm) ont été déposées par voie chimique en phase vapeur assisté par plasma (PECVD) ou par couches atomiques (ALD) sur des substrats silicium recouverts de matériaux généralement présents dans des dispositifs microélectroniques tels que le silicium cristallin, le cuivre, le tungstène nitrure et le poly-imide. Des mesures de cytotoxicité ont été réalisées et des tests de vieillissement ont été effectués pendant plusieurs semaines à des températures différentes dans une solution saline phosphatée (PBS) mais aussi dans une solution à base de sérum de veau fœtale (NaCl/SVF). Les changements dans la composition chimique et l'épaisseur ont été suivies par VASE, XPS et spectroscopie de masse d'ions secondaires à temps de vol (TOF-SIMS). Il a été montré que les couches de SiO2 et de SiN (généralement utilisées pour la protection dans l'industrie de la microélectronique) n'étaient pas stables dans le PBS et le NaCl/SVF à 37°C, même si en revanche elles offraient une bonne barrière aux gazes. L'Al2O3 a lui montré une très bonne tenu en milieu salin et une remarquable herméticité mais en revanche, il s'est corrodé rapidement dans le NaCl/SVF. Les couches de DLC, SiOC et TiO2 ont donné les meilleurs résultats de stabilité dans le PBS et le sérum de veau. Enfin, il a aussi été montré dans cette thèse que l'empilement TiO2 sur Al2O3 offrait la meilleure efficacité comme barrière hermétique et diffusive pour la protection des microsystèmes de silicium contre la corrosion dans les milieux salins

Glucksman Fellowship Program Student Research Reports

The Glucksman Institute for Research in Securities Markets awards fellowships each year to outstanding second year Stern MBA students to work on independent research projects under a faculty member's supervision. Four research projects completed by the Glucksman Fellows of 2011-2012 are included in this special issue of the Finance Department Working Paper Series. These papers focus on important topics in empirical financial economics. Samuel Welt, under the supervision of William Silber, analyzes the economic and political factors that determine the magnitude of increases in the debt ceiling voted by Congress. Karen Shortt, under the direction of Aswath Damodaran , investigates the relationship between corporate environmental performance and abnormal stock price movements of a firm. Oren Livne, under the supervision of Alexander Ljungqvist, provides an overview of the evolution of the private company secondary marketplace in the United States, and evaluates the ability of secondary market data to predict share price changes post IPO. Ismael Orenstein, under the supervision of Yakov Amihud, analyzes the impact of the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing (QE) program on the relative pricing of treasury securities. These papers, reflecting the research effort of four outstanding Stern MBA students, are summarized in more detail in the Table of Contents on the next page

The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases

[Excerpt] The statutory debt limit applies to almost all federal debt. The limit applies to federal debt held by the public (that is, debt held outside the federal government itself) and to federal debt held by the government’s own accounts. Federal trust funds, such as Social Security, Medicare, Transportation, and Civil Service Retirement accounts, hold most of this internally held debt. The government’s surpluses or deficits determine essentially all of the change in debt held by the public. The government’s on-budget fiscal balance, which excludes a U.S. Postal Service net surplus or deficit and a large Social Security surplus of payroll taxes net of paid benefits, does not directly affect debt held in government accounts. Increases or decreases in debt held by government accounts result from net financial flows into accounts holding the debt, such as the Social Security Trust Fund. Legal requirements and government accounting practices also affect levels of debt held by government accounts. On August 2, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; S.365), after an extended debt limit episode. The federal debt reached its statutory limit on May 16, 2011, prompting Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to declare a debt issuance suspension period, allowing certain extraordinary measures to extend Treasury’s borrowing capacity. The BCA included provisions aimed at deficit reduction and would allow the debt limit to rise between $2,100 billion and$2,400 billion in three stages, with the latter two subject to congressional disapproval. Two of the three increases, totaling $900 billion, have occurred, and a request for a third increase is likely to occur in mid-January 2012

Traffic and resource management in content-centric networks (design and evaluation)

Dans les dernières années, l utilisation d Internet a sensiblement changé en passant d un modèle de communication centré sur les machines á un centré sur les contenus. La plus part de services utilisés par les clients d Internet aujourd hui sont déjà centré sur les contenus même et pas sur leurs emplacement. Dans ce contexte, beaucoup de projets de recherche proposent un changement de l architecture de l Internet, en mettent des contenu identifié par leur nom au centre du réseau. Ce group de proposition est identifiés sous le nom de Information Centric Networking (ICN). Cette thèse se focalise sur la proposition Content-Centric Network (CCN). Dans une premier temps, nous analysons les performance du modèle de communication CCN en se concentrent sur le partage de la bande passante et de la mémoire et en proposant des formules pour la caractérisation du temps de transfert. Deuxièmement, nous proposons un protocole de contrôle de congestion et des mécanismes de forwarding pour CCN. En particulier on présent un premier mécanisme de contrôle de congestion, Interest Control Protocol (ICP), qui utilise une fenêtre contrôlé avec le mécanisme Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease au récepteur. En complément avec ça, nous présentons un mécanisme distribué (hop-by-hop) pour obtenir une détection/réaction à la congestion plus rapide. Nous proposons aussi une modification d'ICP en implémentant le mécanisme Remote Adaptive Active Queue Management pour exploiter efficacement le multi-chemin. En fin, nous présentons un mécanisme de forwarding distribué qui base ses décisions sur des mesure de qualité d interface par chaque préfixe disponible dans les tableaux de routage.The advent of the World Wide Web has radically changed Internet usage from host-to-host to service access and data retrieval. The majority of services used by Internet s clients are content-centric (e.g. web). However, the original Internet revolves around host-to-host communication for which it was conceived. Even if Internet has been able to address the challenges offered by new applications, there is an evident mismatch between the architecture and its current usage. Many projects in national research agencies propose to redesign the Internet architecture around named data. Such research efforts are identified under the name of Information Centric Networking. This thesis focuses on the Content-Centric Networking (CCN) proposition. We first analyze the CCN communication model with particular focus on the bandwidth and storage sharing performance, We compute closed formulas for data delivery time, that we use in the second part of the thesis as guideline for network protocol design. Second, we propose some CCN congestion control and forwarding mechanisms. We present a first window based receiver driven flow control protocol, Interest Control Protocol (ICP). We also introduce a hop-by-hop congestion control mechanism to obtain early congestion detection and reaction. We then extend the original ICP congestion control protocol implementing a Remote Adaptive Active Queue Management mechanism in order to efficiently exploit heterogeneous (joint/disjoint) network paths. Finally, we introduce a distributed forwarding mechanism that bases its decisions on per prefix and per interface quality measurement without impacting the system scalability.PARIS-Télécom ParisTech (751132302) / SudocSudocFranceF