Information Technology: Impacts on Environment and Sustainable Development

In this modern world, Information Technology gives impacts on society, countries, economy, and environment. This paper discusses the positive, negative, direct and indirect impacts of IT on environmental issues. A strategy for sustainable development in ICT and its future demand are also proposed. Apart from that, a research was also done to find a quantitative indicator to show the relationship between demand in IT industry and impacts to the environment. By using a mathematical formula, an estimation of the effect to the environment can be found. By using the indicator, it is hoped that society and the IT industry will become more aware of their action to the environment

Bond-orientational ordering and shear rigidity in modulated colloidal liquids

From Landau-Alexander-McTague theory and Monte-Carlo simulation results we show that the modulated liquid obtained by subjecting a colloidal system to a periodic laser modulation has long range bond-orientational order and non-zero shear rigidity. From infinite field simulation results we show that in the modulated liquid phase, the translational order parameter correlation function decays to zero exponentially while the correlation function for the bond-orientational order saturates to a finite value at large distances.Comment: 8 pages, elsart documentclass, to be published in Physica A as part of proceedings for Stat-Phys 3, Calcutt

Migration in Multi-Population Differential Evolution for Many Objective Optimization

The paper proposes a novel extension of many objective optimization using differential evolution (MaODE). MaODE solves a many objective optimization (MaOO) problem by parallel optimization of individual objectives. MaODE involves N populations, each created for an objective to be optimized using MaODE. The only mode of knowledge transfer among populations in MaODE is the modified version of mutation policy of DE, where every member of the population during mutation is influenced by the best members of all the populations under consideration. The present work aims at further increasing the communication between the members of the population by communicating between a superior and an inferior population, using a novel migration strategy. The proposed migration policy enables poor members of an inferior population to evolve with a superior population. Simultaneously, members from the superior population are also transferred to the inferior one to help it improving its performance. Experiments undertaken reveal that the proposed extended version of MaODE significantly outperforms its counterpart and the state-of-the-art techniques

Effect of Standard Treatment Guidelines with or without Prescription Audit on Prescribing for Acute Respiratory Tract Infection (ARI) and Diarrhoea in some Thana Health Complexes (THCs) of Bangladesh

Inappropriate prescribing for ARI and diarrhoea is a serious health problem in many developing countries including Bangladesh. A baseline retrospective prescribing survey for ARI and diarrhoea have been conducted in randomly selected 60 thana health complexes (THCs) of Dhaka division of Bangladesh. In the 38 of 60 THCs, the prescribers did not comply with the standard treatment guidelines (STG) for ARI. They are marked as \u27unsatisfactory performers\u27. In these THCs unnecessary antibiotics were prescribed in more than 50% of the encounters. The study further revealed that in 26 THCs, comprising 41.6% of the 38 THCs, the situation was even worse regarding the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. In these THCs antibiotics were prescribed in \u3e or =72% of the encounters. For diarrhoea, only in 8.3% of the THCs antibiotics were prescribed in \u3e or =50% of the encounters. Encouragingly, most of the prescribers prescribed ORS. So the diarrhoea cases were dropped from the intervention. The 24 out of 26 worse performing THCs for ARI management, were grouped into three groups: Group-I (implementing STG+ Audit), Group-II (STG) and Group-III (no intervention, control). The prescribers of the THCs belonging to Group-I and Group-II received STG+Audit and STG only respectively as intervention(s). On the contrary, the prescribers of the THCs of Group-III (control) did not receive any intervention. It was observed that after the implementation of interventions the use of the unnecessary antibiotics to treat ARI was significantly reduced (p\u3c0.01) compared to pre-intervention period in Group-I (STG+Audit). In this group highly significant (p\u3c0.000) reduction in antibiotics use was achieved in 6 out of 8 THCs. The average reduction in antibiotic use in terms of encounters was 23.7 and 15.2% in the Group-I and Group-II respectively owing to the intervention(s). Significant reduction in antibiotic use in terms of THCs was 3 (out of 8 THCs) and 2 (out of 8 THCs) belonging to the Group-II and Group-III respectively. When compensated for the change in the control group, the reduction of antibiotic use in terms of encounters was 15.2 and 6.9% in the THCs of the Group-I and Group-II respectively due to introduction of the interventions. The study concludes that STG supported by prescription audit are highly effective interventions to change the prescribing behaviour of the prescribers for ARI in the THCs

Exclusive Queueing Process with Discrete Time

In a recent study [C Arita, Phys. Rev. E 80, 051119 (2009)], an extension of the M/M/1 queueing process with the excluded-volume effect as in the totally asymmetric simple exclusion process (TASEP) was introduced. In this paper, we consider its discrete-time version. The update scheme we take is the parallel one. A stationary-state solution is obtained in a slightly arranged matrix product form of the discrete-time open TASEP with the parallel update. We find the phase diagram for the existence of the stationary state. The critical line which separates the parameter space into the regions with and without the stationary state can be written in terms of the stationary current of the open TASEP. We calculate the average length of the system and the average number of particles

∼3-nm ZnO nanoislands deposition and application in charge trapping memory grown by single ALD step

Low-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures are of great interest in high performance electronic and photonic devices. ZnO is considered to be a multifunctional material due to its unique properties with potential in various applications. In this work, 3-nm ZnO nanoislands are deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and the electronic properties are characterized by UV-Vis-NIR Spectrophotometer and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. The results show that the nanostructures show quantum confinement effects in 1D. Moreover, Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Capacitor (MOSCAP) charge trapping memory devices with ZnO nanoislands charge storage layer are fabricated by a single ALD step and their performances are analyzed. The devices showed a large memory window at low operating voltages with excellent retention and endurance characteristics due to the additional oxygen vacancies in the nanoislands and the deep barrier for the trapped holes due to the reduction in ZnO electron affinity. The results show that the ZnO nanoislands are promising in future low power memory applications. © The Author(s) 2016

Growth of ∼3-nm ZnO nano-islands using Atomic Layer Deposition

In this work, the deposition of 3-nm dispersed Zinc-Oxide (ZnO) nanislands by thermal Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) is demonstrated. The physical and electronic properties of the islands are studied using Atomic Force Microscopy, UV-Vis-NIR spectroscopy, and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. The results show that there is quantum confinement in 1D in the nanoislands which is manifested by the increase of the bandgap and the reduction of the electron affinity of the ZnO islands. The results are promising for the fabrication of future electronic and optoelectronic devices by single ALD step. © 2016 IEEE

Wang-Landau study of the 3D Ising model with bond disorder

We implement a two-stage approach of the Wang-Landau algorithm to investigate the critical properties of the 3D Ising model with quenched bond randomness. In particular, we consider the case where disorder couples to the nearest-neighbor ferromagnetic interaction, in terms of a bimodal distribution of strong versus weak bonds. Our simulations are carried out for large ensembles of disorder realizations and lattices with linear sizes $L$ in the range $L=8-64$. We apply well-established finite-size scaling techniques and concepts from the scaling theory of disordered systems to describe the nature of the phase transition of the disordered model, departing gradually from the fixed point of the pure system. Our analysis (based on the determination of the critical exponents) shows that the 3D random-bond Ising model belongs to the same universality class with the site- and bond-dilution models, providing a single universality class for the 3D Ising model with these three types of quenched uncorrelated disorder.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, to be published in Eur. Phys. J.