965 research outputs found
DIETARY PATTERNS IN STREAM- AND LAKE-DWELLING POPULATIONS OF AUSTROPOTAMOBIUS PALLIPES
White-clawed crayfish (Austropotamobius pallipes) are widespread in Ireland in both running and standing water, although stream-dwelling in much of their range elsewhere. A detailed comparative study of a lake and a stream population demonstrated that diets changed with crayfish size from feeding on entomostracans to a predominance of aquatic macrophytes and terrestrial vegetation. However, carnivory remained important at all sizes: Gammarids were a significant component in larger lake crayfish and in all sizes of stream crayfish. Fish increased in importance with crayfish size. A. pallipes thus appears more carnivorous than some other European and American crayfish. The extent to which this is related to habitat is discussed
Spons & shields: practical isolation for trusted execution
Trusted execution environments (TEEs) promise a cost-effective, âlift-and-shiftâ solution for deploying security-sensitive applications in untrusted clouds. For this, they must support rich, multi-component applications, but a large trusted computing base (TCB) inside the TEE risks that attackers can compromise application security. Fine-grained compartmentalisation can increase security through defense-in-depth, but current solutions either run all software components unprotected in the same TEE, lack efficient shared memory support, or isolate application processes using separate TEEs, impacting performance and compatibility. We describe the Spons & Shields framework (SSF) for Intel SGX TEEs, which offers intra-TEE compartmentalisation using two new abstraction, Spons and Shields. Spons and Shields generalise process, library and user/kernel isolation inside the TEE while allowing for efficient memory sharing. When users deploy unmodified multi-component applications in a TEE, SSF dynamically creates Spons (one per POSIX process or library) and Shields (to enforce a given security policy for memory accesses). Applications can be hardened with minor code changes, e.g., by using a separate Shield to isolate an SSL library. SSF uses compiler instrumentation to protect Shield boundaries, exploiting MPX instructions if available. We evaluate SSF using a complex application service (NGINX, PHP interpreter and PostgreSQL) and show that its overhead is comparable to process isolation
DNA sequence to a million doses of COVID-19 therapeutic antibody in 9 months â Making the seemingly impossible, possible
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Renormalization of the tunnel splitting in a rotating nanomagnet
We study spin tunneling in a magnetic nanoparticle with biaxial anisotropy
that is free to rotate about its anisotropy axis. Exact instanton of the
coupled equations of motion is found that connects degenerate classical energy
minima. We show that mechanical freedom of the particle renormalizes magnetic
anisotropy and increases the tunnel splitting.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Observing Interprofessional Simulation
© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This chapter has a particular focus on the observersâ role in simulation-based learning activities. Simulation-based learning is often organised so that participants rotates between active participation in the scenario and participation as observers. The research examples provided show that the conditions for learning are related to the locations where and the ways the observers are situated, and to how the instructions to the observers are formulated. Arguments are put forward that the observersâ role in simulation has unexploited potential for developing skills of noticing
EUV ionization of pure He nanodroplets: Mass-correlated photoelectron imaging, Penning ionization and electron energy-loss spectra
The ionization dynamics of pure He nanodroplets irradiated by EUV radiation
is studied using Velocity-Map Imaging PhotoElectron-PhotoIon COincidence
(VMI-PEPICO) spectroscopy. We present photoelectron energy spectra and angular
distributions measured in coincidence with the most abundant ions He+, He2+,
and He3+. Surprisingly, below the autoionization threshold of He droplets we
find indications for multiple excitation and subsequent ionization of the
droplets by a Penning-like process. At high photon energies we evidence
inelastic collisions of photoelectrons with the surrounding He atoms in the
droplets
Validation and robustness testing of a HPLC method for the determination of avermectins and moxidectin in animal liver samples using an alumina column clean-up
peer-reviewedA multi-residue method has been developed for the quantitative determination of moxidectin, abamectin, doramectin and ivermectin in liver samples, with capability for qualitative identification of the presence of eprinomectin. Liver samples are extracted with isooctane, followed by clean-up on alumina-N solid phase extraction (SPE) cartridges. Extracts are derivatised and determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. The method was validated using bovine liver fortified at levels of 4 and 20 ÎŒg kgâ1 with the drugs. The mean recovery from bovine liver ranged between 90 and 96%. The intra and inter-assay variations showed RSD typically of <5% and <10%, respectively. The procedure was applied also to ovine and porcine liver, giving similar results. A robustness study, carried out on the alumina clean-up step, indicated that the step is relatively insensitive to method changes. However, significant differences overall were found for the type of alumina and/or commercial SPE cartridge used. The limit of quantitation of the method is 2 ÎŒg kgâ1 (ppb)
Structural stability of Fe5Si3 and Ni2Si studied by high-pressure x-ray diffraction and ab initio total-energy calculations
We performed high-pressure angle dispersive x-ray diffraction measurements on
Fe5Si3 and Ni2Si up to 75 GPa. Both materials were synthesized in bulk
quantities via a solid-state reaction. In the pressure range covered by the
experiments, no evidence of the occurrence of phase transitions was observed.
On top of that, Fe5Si3 was found to compress isotropically, whereas an
anisotropic compression was observed in Ni2Si. The linear incompressibility of
Ni2Si along the c-axis is similar in magnitude to the linear incompressibility
of diamond. This fact is related to the higher valence-electron charge density
of Ni2Si along the c-axis. The observed anisotropic compression of Ni2Si is
also related to the layered structure of Ni2Si where hexagonal layers of Ni2+
cations alternate with graphite-like layers formed by (NiSi)2- entities. The
experimental results are supported by ab initio total-energy calculations
carried out using density functional theory and the pseudopotential method. For
Fe5Si3, the calculations also predicted a phase transition at 283 GPa from the
hexagonal P63/mcm phase to the cubic structure adopted by Fe and Si in the
garnet Fe5Si3O12. The room-temperature equations of state for Fe5Si3 and Ni2Si
are also reported and a possible correlation between the bulk modulus of iron
silicides and the coordination number of their minority element is discussed.
Finally, we report novel descriptions of these structures, in particular of the
predicted high-pressure phase of Fe5Si3 (the cation subarray in the garnet
Fe5Si3O12), which can be derived from spinel Fe2SiO4 (Fe6Si3O12).Comment: 44 pages, 13 figures, 3 Table
Electronic structure of periodic curved surfaces -- topological band structure
Electronic band structure for electrons bound on periodic minimal surfaces is
differential-geometrically formulated and numerically calculated. We focus on
minimal surfaces because they are not only mathematically elegant (with the
surface characterized completely in terms of "navels") but represent the
topology of real systems such as zeolites and negative-curvature fullerene. The
band structure turns out to be primarily determined by the topology of the
surface, i.e., how the wavefunction interferes on a multiply-connected surface,
so that the bands are little affected by the way in which we confine the
electrons on the surface (thin-slab limit or zero thickness from the outset).
Another curiosity is that different minimal surfaces connected by the Bonnet
transformation (such as Schwarz's P- and D-surfaces) possess one-to-one
correspondence in their band energies at Brillouin zone boundaries.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, eps files will be sent on request to
[email protected]
Transformation Pathways of Silica under High Pressure
Concurrent molecular dynamics simulations and ab initio calculations show
that densification of silica under pressure follows a ubiquitous two-stage
mechanism. First, anions form a close-packed sub-lattice, governed by the
strong repulsion between them. Next, cations redistribute onto the interstices.
In cristobalite silica, the first stage is manifest by the formation of a
metastable phase, which was observed experimentally a decade ago, but never
indexed due to ambiguous diffraction patterns. Our simulations conclusively
reveal its structure and its role in the densification of silica.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure
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