BRACELET: Hierarchical Edge-Cloud Microservice Infrastructure for Scientific Instruments’ Lifetime Connectivity

Recent advances in cyber-infrastructure have enabled digital data sharing and ubiquitous network connectivity between scientific instruments and cloud-based storage infrastructure for uploading, storing, curating, and correlating of large amounts of materials and semiconductor fabrication data and metadata. However, there is still a significant number of scientific instruments running on old operating systems that are taken offline and cannot connect to the cloud infrastructure, due to security and performance concerns. In this paper, we propose BRACELET - an edge-cloud infrastructure that augments the existing cloud-based infrastructure with edge devices and helps to tackle the unique performance and security challenges that scientific instruments face when they are connected to the cloud through public network. With BRACELET, we put a networked edge device, called cloudlet, in between the scientific instruments and the cloud as the middle tier of a three-tier hierarchy. The cloudlet will shape and protect the data traffic from scientific instruments to the cloud, and will play a foundational role in keeping the instruments connected throughout its lifetime, and continuously providing the otherwise missing performance and security features for the instrument as its operating system ages.NSF Award Number 1659293NSF Award Number 1443013Ope

"Appearance potent"? A content analysis of UK gay and straight men's magazines.

With little actual appraisal, a more 'appearance potent' (i.e., a reverence for appearance ideals) subculture has been used to explain gay men's greater body dissatisfaction in comparison to straight men's. This study sought to assess the respective appearance potency of each subculture by a content analysis of 32 issues of the most read gay (Attitude, Gay Times) and straight men's magazines (Men's Health, FHM) in the UK. Images of men and women were coded for their physical characteristics, objectification and nudity, as were the number of appearance adverts and articles. The gay men's magazines featured more images of men that were appearance ideal, nude and sexualized than the straight men's magazines. The converse was true for the images of women and appearance adverts. Although more research is needed to understand the effect of this content on the viewer, the findings are consistent with a more appearance potent gay male subculture

Media internalization and conformity to traditional masculine norms in relation to body image concerns among men

Previous studies have separately examined conformity to masculine norms and internalization of body ideals in the media in relation to the drive for muscularity (DM). This study was designed to examine these factors together in relation to DM, and further examine how they may differ in relation to drive for thinness (DT) and drive for leanness (DL). Participants were 284 Australian males between ages 18 to 42. They completed validated measures that assessed DM, DT, DL, male gender role norms, and internalization of body ideals. The findings showed that internalization of body ideals mediated the relationship between masculine role norms and body image in the case of both DM and DL. However, masculine norms and internalization were independent predictors of DT. Our findings contribute to further understanding of the roles that the media and masculine norms have in shaping men’s drive for muscularity, leanness, and thinness. Longitudinal research is needed to confirm the nature and direction of these relationships

Impurity-induced layer disordering and hydrogenation in the indium aluminum gallium phosphide material system: Visible spectrum semiconductor lasers

The development of visible-spectrum semiconductor lasers is of immense economic and practical importance. Because of the extremely high efficiency of semiconductor lasers, coherent visible light sources can be made with extremely low power requirements. Applications for such sources include high-density optical storage units and optical communications. Additionally, the use of multiple-stripe arrays makes high-power ($\gg$200 mW per facet) coherent semiconductor light sources a possibility.In this work, various aspects of the problems involved in constructing visible-spectrum semiconductor lazers are discussed. First, the difficulties in obtaining reliable devices near the direct-indirect crossover of the \rm Al\sb{x}Ga\sb{1-x}As-GaAs material system are discussed. Hydrolysis of high Al-content buried layers via interaction of water vapor in the air with the crystal at pinholes and cleaved edges is found to result in slow decomposition of QWH material. Next, the \rm In\sb{1-y}(Al\sb{x} Ga\sb{1-x})\sb{y}P material system is put forth as the material system of choice for the construction of visible-spectrum semiconductor lasers. Data are shown on the continuous-wave (cw) room-temperture operation of oxide-stripe lasers.Two important techniques for the realization of high performance device operation are next described. The first of these, impurity-induced layer disordering (IILD), is useful for the construction of low-threshold single-stripe lasers, high-power multistripe lasers, and high beam-quality devices. The disordering of \rm In\sb{1-y} (Al\sb{x} Ga\sb{1-x})\sb{y}P heterolayers via Si and Ge diffusion is first examined via shallow-angle slant cross-sectioning, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), and photoluminescence (PL) on as-grown and disordered InAlP-InGaP superlattice (SL) crystals. Disordering via Si diffusion is then applied to the fabrication of buried heterostructure visible-spectrum lasers. These devices operate at room temperature under pulsed excitation ($\lambda$ $\sim$ 6395 A) and cw at $-$47\sp\circC ($\lambda$ $\sim$ 6255 A).Finally, hydrogenation is examined in the \rm In\sb{1-y} (Al\sb{x} Ga\sb{1-x}) \sb{y}P material system. This technique allows the construction of gain-guided single- and multiple-stripe lasers. The effect of hydrogen plasma exposure at elevated temperatures on the fundamental material properties is first examined. Photoluminescence is used to examine recombination efficiency, electrochemical carrier concentration profiling is used to examine carrier passivation, and scanning electron microscopy is used to look at surface degradation. Hydrogenation is then applied to the construction of single-stripe gain-guided lasers. These devices operate cw room temperature at a wavelength of 6395 A.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

Iii-V Oxidation: Discoveries And Applications In Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Since the discovery of III-V oxidation by Dallesasse and Holonyak in 1989, significant progress has been made, both technically and commercially, on the use of oxides in compound semiconductor devices. The process-induced modification of refractive index and conductivity allows control of the two carriers of information in optoelectronic systems, the photon and the electron, enabling wide-ranging device applications. Of great technical and commercial importance has been the use of oxidation for the fabrication of high-speed vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), first implemented by Deppe\u27s group at The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX, USA). Here, the low refractive index III-V oxide\u27s interaction with the optical modes inside the VCSEL creates an optimal overlap of gain and field, enabling lasers with ultralow threshold currents and desirable optical beam properties. The discovery of III-V oxidation, key technical milestones in the fabrication of photonic and electronic devices that use oxidation, and the application to VCSELs are reviewed. © 1963-2012 IEEE

Modelling anisotropic lateral oxidation from circular mesas

International audienceIn this paper, an iterative method to model the anisotropic lateral oxidation of circular structures is proposed and validated by confrontation to experimental data. The described model enables the efficient calculation of the temporal bi-dimensional evolution of the oxidation front shape, starting from a circular mesa, and progressing inward as a result of an anisotropic process combining an isotropic diffusion with an anisotropic reaction. The result of the developed model shows that the oxide aperture smoothly deforms from a circle to become more diamond-like, mimicking the experimental situation encountered when fabricating vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) on (100) wafers or, more generally, when oxidizing circular mesas of aluminum-containing III-V semiconductor on similarly oriented substrates