With You, My Own!

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/4673/thumbnail.jp

dRail: a novel physical layout methodology for power gated circuits

In this paper we present a physical layout methodology, called dRail, to allow power gated and non-power gated cells to be placed next to each other. This is unlike traditional voltage area layout which separates cells to prevent shorting of power supplies leading to impact on area, routing and power. To implement dRail, a modified standard cell architecture and physical layout is proposed. The methodology is validated by implementing power gating on the data engine in an ARM Cortex-A5 processor using a 65nm library, and shows up to 38% reduction in area cost when compared to traditional voltage area layou

Changing Social Focusing in Indigenous Social Movements

Using complexity science, we develop a theory to explain why some social movements develop through stages of increasing intensity which we define as an increase in  social focusing. We name six such stages of focusing: disintegration, revitalization, religious, organisation, militaristic, and self-immolation. Our theory uses two variables from the social sciences: differentiation and centrality, where differentiation refers to the internal structure of a social system and centrality measures the variety of incoming information. The ratio of the two, differentiation/centrality (the d/c ratio) is a shorthand way of saying that centrality must be matched by a corresponding level of differentiation to maintain basic focusing. If centrality exceeds differentiation, then the result is a lack of focusing—disintegration. On the other hand, the more differentiation exceeds centrality, the more the system moves into the higher stages of social focusing, from revitalization to the final stage of self-immolation.   To test the theory we examine historically indigenous social movements, in particular, the Grassy Narrows movement in northern Ontario Canada. We also suggest how the theory might be applied to explain other examples of social movement, especially millenarian movements at the end of the 20th century. We also suggest sociocybernetic ways the rest of society and the social movement itself can change its own social focusing

Solder Joint Health Monitoring Testbed

A method of monitoring the health of selected solder joints, called SJ-BIST, has been developed by Ridgetop Group Inc. under a Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract. The primary goal of this research program is to test and validate this method in a flight environment using realistically seeded faults in selected solder joints. An additional objective is to gather environmental data for future development of physics-based and data-driven prognostics algorithms. A test board is being designed using a Xilinx FPGA. These boards will be tested both in flight and on the ground using a shaker table and an altitude chamber

Essays in Health and Labor Economics

Chapter 1 - this paper demonstrates that expanding access to Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) to lower-income women leads to positive selection in the health of the cohorts of children being born. I exploit the staggered timing of three privately funded programs which distributed LARCs at no cost to lower income-women in Colorado, Iowa and St. Louis. I implement an event-study design which compares trends in treated counties with other U.S. counties with similar family planning clinics, but which did not receive additional funding to distribute free LARCs. I find that expanded LARC access led to reductions of approximately 1.0 'extremely preterm' births and 1.1 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. I find significant reductions in deaths due to birth defects, maternal pregnancy complications, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and homicide. My estimates imply a reduction of approximately 90 infant deaths and 85 extremely preterm births per year in Colorado. Using a back of the envelope calculation, I find that the Colorado program, which was funded by a $27 million donation, led to reductions in ventilation costs for extremely preterm births of approximately$5.6 million per year. These results suggest that giving lower-income women the means to control their fertility has the potential to reduce adverse infant health outcomes and could decrease the infant mortality gap which exists between the US and other leading economies. Chapter 2 - In late January, 1990, the salary of every National Hockey League (NHL) player was suddenly disclosed, ending a decades-long culture of pay secrecy. I find that underpaid players respond to this new information by reallocating effort from defense to offense, which is more highly compensated within the league. Underpaid players begin scoring more, but allow their teams to get scored on by even more than the additional goals they provide. Asymmetrically, overpaid players do not become more defensive-minded. Consistent with reference-dependent utility theory, I find suggestive evidence that this shift is more pronounced for underpaid players who play for teams with higher overall payrolls, as these players likely have a larger discrepancy between their actual salary and their reference point. Chapter 3 - Sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes have become an increasingly popular policy to combat the worldwide obesity epidemic, but relatively little is known about their impact on health outcomes, particularly among high school aged students. In this paper, I use public-use data from the Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBSS) to determine whether high school students living in three of the American cities which have implemented SSB taxes have experienced public health improvements. Using an event-study design that compares outcomes in treated districts to a group of similar control districts, I find significant reductions in both SSB consumption and average BMI, with suggestive evidence that the improvements are concentrated among female and non-white respondents.</p

Long-term calorie restriction in humans is not associated with indices of delayed immunologic aging: A descriptive study.

BACKGROUND: Delayed immunologic aging is purported to be a major mechanism through which calorie restriction (CR) exerts its anti-aging effects in non-human species. However, in non-obese humans, the effect of CR on the immune system has been understudied relative to its effects on the cardiometabolic system. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether CR is associated with delayed immunologic aging in non-obese humans. METHODS: We tested whether long-term CR practitioners (average 10.03 years of CR) evidenced decreased expression of T cell immunosenescence markers and longer immune cell telomeres compared to gender-, race/ethnicity-, age-, and education-matched "healthy" Body Mass Index (BMI) and "overweight"/"obese" BMI groups. RESULTS: Long-term human CR practitioners had lower BMI (p &lt;  0.001) and fasting glucose (p &lt;  0.001), as expected. They showed similar frequencies of pre-senescent cells (CD8+CD28- T cells and CD57 and PD-1 expressing T cells) to the comparison groups. Even after adjusting for covariates, including cytomegalovirus status, we observed shorter peripheral blood mononuclear cell telomeres in the CR group (p = 0.012) and no difference in granulocyte telomeres between groups (p = 0.42). CONCLUSIONS: We observed no clear evidence that CR as it is currently practiced in humans delays immune aging related to telomere length or T cell immunosenescent markers

Ariel - Volume 2 Number 2

Editors Delvyn C. Case, Jr. Paul M. Fernhoff News Editors Richard Bonanno Daniel B. Gould Ronald A. Hoffman Lay-Out Editor Carol Dolinskas Sports Editor James J. Nocon Contributing Editors MichaeI J. Blecker Lin Sey Edwards Jack Guralnik W. Cherry Light Features Editor Donald A. Bergman Stephen P. Flynn Business Manager Nick Grego Public Relations Robin A. Edward