Layout to circuit extraction for three-dimensional thermal-electrical circuit simulation of device structures

In this paper, a method is proposed for extraction of coupled networks from layout information for simulation of electrothermal device behavior. The networks represent a three-dimensional (3-D) device structure with circuit elements. The electrical and thermal characteristics of this circuit representation are calculated with a circuit simulator. Spatial potential distributions, current flows, and temperature distributions in the device structure are calculated on the spatial coordinates. This simulation method can be placed between device simulation and (conventional) circuit simulation. It has been implemented in a circuit simulator and is demonstrated for simulation of self-heating in a bipolar low frequency power transistor. The main advantage of this simulation method is that not only the 3-D thermal behavior of the whole chip is simulated, but that this is also directly coupled to the electrical device behavior by means of the power dissipation and temperature distribution in the device. This offers the possibility for the circuit designer to simulate 3-D, coupled, thermal-electrical problems with a circuit simulator. As an example, the influence of the emitter contacting on the internal temperature and current distribution of a BJT is investigate

Automated semantic trajectory annotation with indoor point-of-interest visits in urban areas

User trajectories contain a wealth of implicit information. The places that people visit, provide us with information about their preferences and needs. Furthermore, it provides us with information about the popularity of places, for example at which time of the year or day these places are frequently visited. The potential for behavioral analysis of trajectories is widely discussed in literature, but all of these methods need a pre-processing step: the geometric trajectory data needs to be transformed into a semantic collection or sequence of visited points-of-interest that is more suitable for data mining. Especially indoor activities in urban areas are challenging to detect from raw trajectory data. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the automated detection of visited points-of-interest. This algorithm extracts the actual visited points-of-interest well, both in terms of precision and recall, even for the challenging urban indoor activity detection. We demonstrate the strength of the algorithm by comparing it to three existing and widely used algorithms, using annotated trajectory data, collected through an experiment with students in the city of Hengelo, The Netherlands. Our algorithm, which combines multiple trajectory pre-processing techniques from existing work with several novel ones, shows significant improvements

Generic knowledge-based analysis of social media for recommendations

Recommender systems have been around for decades to help people find the best matching item in a pre-defined item set. Knowledge-based recommender systems are used to match users based on information that links the two, but they often focus on a single, specific application, such as movies to watch or music to listen to. In this presentation, we present our Interest-Based Recommender System (IBRS). This knowledge-based recommender system provides recommendations that are generic in three dimensions: IBRS is (1) domain-independent, (2) language-independent, and (3) independent of the used social medium. To match user interests with items, the first are derived from the user's social media profile, enriched with a deeper semantic embedding obtained from the generic knowledge base DBpedia. These interests are used to extract personalized recommendations from a tagged item set from any domain, in any language. We also present the results of a validation of IBRS by a test user group of 44 people using two item sets from separate domains: greeting cards and holiday homes

Higher return to pre-injury type of sports after revision anterior ligament reconstruction with lateral extra-articular tenodesis compared to without lateral extra-articular tenodesis

PurposeTo evaluate the rate of return to pre-injury type of sports (RTS type) in patients after revision anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) with lateral extra-articular tenodesis (LET) compared to patients after revision ACLR without LET.MethodsSeventy-eight patients who underwent revision ACLR with an autologous ipsilateral bone-patellar tendon-bone autograft with and without LET were included at least one year after surgery (mean follow-up: 43.9, SD: 29.2 months). All patients filled in a questionnaire about RTS type, the Knee injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS), the International Knee Documentation Committee subjective form (IKDCsubjective), and the Tegner activity score.ResultsThe RTS type for revision ACLR with LET was 22 of 42 (52%), whereas 11 of 36 (31%) of the patients who underwent revision ACLR without LET returned to the pre-injury type of sport (p = 0.05). No significant differences were found in KOOS subscores, IKDCsubjective, and Tegner activity scores.ConclusionAn additional LET increases the rate of RTS type after revision ACLR

Probing the missing baryons with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect from filaments

Observations of galaxies and galaxy clusters in the local universe can account for only $\sim\,10\%$ of the total baryon content. Cosmological simulations predict that the `missing baryons' are spread throughout filamentary structures in the cosmic web, forming a low-density gas with temperatures of $10^5-10^7\,\!$K. We search for this warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM) by stacking the Planck Compton $y$-parameter map of the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect for 1,002,334 pairs of CMASS galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We model the contribution from the galaxy halo pairs assuming spherical symmetry, finding a residual tSZ signal at the 2.9\mbox{\sigma} level from a stacked filament of length $10.5\,h^{-1}\,\rm Mpc$ with a Compton parameter magnitude $y=(0.6\pm0.2)\times10^{-8}$. We consider possible sources of contamination and conclude that bound gas in haloes may contribute only up to $20\%$ of the measured filamentary signal. To estimate the filament gas properties we measure the gravitational lensing signal for the same sample of galaxy pairs; in combination with the tSZ signal, this yields an inferred gas density of $\rho_{\rm b}=(5.5\pm 2.9)\times\bar{\rho_{\rm b}}$ with a temperature $T=(2.7\pm 1.7) \times 10^6\,$K. This result is consistent with the predicted WHIM properties, and overall the filamentary gas can account for $11\pm 7\%$ of the total baryon content of the Universe. We also see evidence that the gas filament extends beyond the galaxy pair. Averaging over this longer baseline boosts the significance of the tSZ signal and increases the associated baryon content to $28\pm 12\%$ of the global value.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in A&

Barriers to home care for terminally ill Turkish and Moroccan migrants, perceived by GPs and nurses: a survey

BACKGROUND: Previous qualitative research proved that relatives of elderly terminally ill Turkish and Moroccan immigrants experience several barriers to the use of Dutch professional home care. The aim of this study was to explore how general practitioners and home care nurses perceive the home care for terminally ill Turkish and Moroccan migrants and their families in the Netherlands. METHODS: Questionnaires were sent to home care organizations and GPs working in areas where most of these migrants are living. 93 nurses and 78 GPs provided information about their experiences and opinions regarding home care for this group of patients. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics. RESULTS: GPs refer relatively few patients from these migrant groups to home care. They often find it difficult to assess the needs of these patients and their families. In 40% of the GPs' cases in which terminally ill Turkish and Moroccan migrants were not referred to home care, the GP regretted this afterwards: the patients had not received sufficient qualified care, and their informal carers had often become overburdened. In addition, home care nurses often express dissatisfaction with the home care given to terminally ill Turkish or Moroccan patients, because of communication problems, the patients' lack of knowledge of the disease, or difficulties in making suitable appointments with the patient or with the family. CONCLUSIONS: Nurses and GPs cite chiefly similar factors influencing access to and use of home care as family members did in a previous study. However, according to GPs and nurses, the main barrier to the use of home care concerns communication problems, while relatives cited the preference for family care as the main reason for abstaining from the use of home care. (aut. ref.

'Emotional' does not even start to cover it: Generalization of overeating in emotional eaters

Based on recent studies indicating that emotional eating is not the clearly defined problem it is often thought to be, the present study investigated whether emotional eaters overeat merely in response to negative emotional cues, or to other cues as well. It was hypothesized that emotional eaters would overeat after a variety of food cues, not limited to negative emotions. Participants took part in four conditions (negative mood manipulation, positive mood manipulation, food exposure and a control condition) divided over two sessions. Each condition was followed by a bogus taste test, after which food intake was measured. Results showed strong correlations between food intake after all four conditions, indicating that increased intake after one type of cue is related to increased intake after other cues. Participants were identified as emotional or non-emotional eaters based on food intake in the negative mood condition, and based on self-reported emotional eating scores. Both measures of emotional eating were significantly related to food intake after all cues. Based on the current findings, we conclude that individuals who show increased food intake when in a negative emotional state also overeat when experiencing other food-signalling cues. This indicates that 'emotional eating' may not fully capture the eating behaviour of individuals currently identified as 'emotional eaters'. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The Aspergillus niger multicopper oxidase family: analysis and overexpression of laccase-like encoding genes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many filamentous fungal genomes contain complex groups of multicopper oxidase (MCO) coding genes that makes them a good source for new laccases with potential biotechnological interest. A bioinformatics analysis of the <it>Aspergillus niger </it>ATCC 1015 genome resulted in the identification of thirteen MCO genes. Ten of them were cloned and homologously overexpressed.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A bioinformatic analysis of the <it>A. niger </it>ATCC 1015 genome revealed the presence of 13 MCO genes belonging to three different subfamilies on the basis of their phylogenetic relationships: ascomycete laccases, fungal pigment MCOs and fungal ferroxidases. According to <it>in silico </it>amino acid sequence analysis, the putative genes encoding for functional extracellular laccases (<it>mcoA</it>, <it>mcoB</it>, <it>mcoC</it>, <it>mcoD</it>, <it>mcoE</it>, <it>mcoF</it>, <it>mcoG</it>, <it>mcoI</it>, <it>mcoJ </it>and <it>mcoM</it>) were placed under the control of the <it>glaA </it>promoter and overexpressed in <it>A. niger </it>N593. Enzyme activity plate assays with several common laccase substrates showed that all genes are actually expressed and code for active MCOs. Interestingly, expressed enzymes show different substrate specificities. In addition, optimization of fungal pigment MCOs extracellular production was investigated. The performance of the widely used glucoamylase signal sequence (ssGlaA) in McoA secretion was studied. Results obtained suggest that ssGlaA do not yield higher levels of secreted McoA when compared to its native secretion signal. Also, McoB synthesis was investigated using different nitrogen sources in minimal medium liquid cultures. Higher yields of extracellular McoB were achieved with (NH₄)₂tartrate.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p><it>Aspergillus niger </it>is a good source of new laccases. The different substrate specificity observed in plate assays makes them interesting to be purified and biochemically compared. The homologous signal sequence of McoA has been shown to be a good choice for its extracellular overexpression. From the nitrogen sources tested (NH₄)₂tartrate has been found to be the most appropriate for McoB production in <it>A. niger</it>.</p

Dusty tails of evaporating exoplanets. II. Physical modelling of the KIC 12557548b light curve

Evaporating rocky exoplanets, such as KIC 12557548b, eject large amounts of dust grains, which can trail the planet in a comet-like tail. When such objects occult their host star, the resulting transit signal contains information about the dust in the tail. We aim to use the detailed shape of the Kepler light curve of KIC 12557548b to constrain the size and composition of the dust grains that make up the tail, as well as the mass loss rate of the planet. Using a self-consistent numerical model of the dust dynamics and sublimation, we calculate the shape of the tail by following dust grains from their ejection from the planet to their destruction due to sublimation. From this dust cloud shape, we generate synthetic light curves (incorporating the effects of extinction and angle-dependent scattering), which are then compared with the phase-folded Kepler light curve. We explore the free-parameter space thoroughly using a Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Our physics-based model is capable of reproducing the observed light curve in detail. Good fits are found for initial grain sizes between 0.2 and 5.6 micron and dust mass loss rates of 0.6 to 15.6 M_earth/Gyr (2-sigma ranges). We find that only certain combinations of material parameters yield the correct tail length. These constraints are consistent with dust made of corundum (Al2O3), but do not agree with a range of carbonaceous, silicate, or iron compositions. Using a detailed, physically motivated model, it is possible to constrain the composition of the dust in the tails of evaporating rocky exoplanets. This provides a unique opportunity to probe to interior composition of the smallest known exoplanets.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, A&A accepte