Smart technologies for effective reconfiguration: the FASTER approach

Current and future computing systems increasingly require that their functionality stays flexible after the system is operational, in order to cope with changing user requirements and improvements in system features, i.e. changing protocols and data-coding standards, evolving demands for support of different user applications, and newly emerging applications in communication, computing and consumer electronics. Therefore, extending the functionality and the lifetime of products requires the addition of new functionality to track and satisfy the customers needs and market and technology trends. Many contemporary products along with the software part incorporate hardware accelerators for reasons of performance and power efficiency. While adaptivity of software is straightforward, adaptation of the hardware to changing requirements constitutes a challenging problem requiring delicate solutions. The FASTER (Facilitating Analysis and Synthesis Technologies for Effective Reconfiguration) project aims at introducing a complete methodology to allow designers to easily implement a system specification on a platform which includes a general purpose processor combined with multiple accelerators running on an FPGA, taking as input a high-level description and fully exploiting, both at design time and at run time, the capabilities of partial dynamic reconfiguration. The goal is that for selected application domains, the FASTER toolchain will be able to reduce the design and verification time of complex reconfigurable systems providing additional novel verification features that are not available in existing tool flows

Changes in serum lactate to aerobic exercise among amateur athletes and non-athletes

Lactate is an end product of glucose metabolism that is usually produced in a larger quantity during exercise. This increase in production during exercise has been understood to be the reason for fatigue. The aim of this study is to determine the responses of serum lactate to aerobic exercise among amateur athletes and non-athletes. 48 consenting males (24 amateur athletes and 24 non-athletes) participated in this comparative quasi-experimental design. Subjects cycled on a bicycle ergometer to attain moderate intensity exercise target heart rate (MIETHR) and maintained the MIETHR till exhaustion (15 on Borgs scale or volitional exertion) while the serum lactate was measured at intervals. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and inferential statistics of Analysis of variance (ANOVA). Alpha level was set at p < 0.05. The mean age of the participants was 26.08±2.28 and 28.13±1.51 for the athletes and non-athletes respectively. There was a significant difference p=0.001 Training induced adaptations include a lower serum lactate level, a point that should be noted in studying of metabolic adaptations.Keywords: Lactate, Athletes, Exercise, Response, Fitnes

CP properties of symmetry-constrained two-Higgs-doublet models

The two-Higgs-doublet model can be constrained by imposing Higgs-family symmetries and/or generalized CP symmetries. It is known that there are only six independent classes of such symmetry-constrained models. We study the CP properties of all cases in the bilinear formalism. An exact symmetry implies CP conservation. We show that soft breaking of the symmetry can lead to spontaneous CP violation (CPV) in three of the classes.Comment: 14 pages, 2 tables, revised version adapted to the journal publicatio

Successful field trial of attractive toxic sugar bait (ATSB) plant-spraying methods against malaria vectors in the Anopheles gambiae complex in Mali, West Africa

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Based on highly successful demonstrations in Israel that attractive toxic sugar bait (ATSB) methods can decimate local populations of mosquitoes, this study determined the effectiveness of ATSB methods for malaria vector control in the semi-arid Bandiagara District of Mali, West Africa.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Control and treatment sites, selected along a road that connects villages, contained man-made ponds that were the primary larval habitats of <it>Anopheles gambiae </it>and <it>Anopheles arabiensis</it>. Guava and honey melons, two local fruits shown to be attractive to <it>An. gambiae </it>s.l., were used to prepare solutions of Attractive Sugar Bait (ASB) and ATSB that additionally contained boric acid as an oral insecticide. Both included a color dye marker to facilitate determination of mosquitoes feeding on the solutions. The trial was conducted over a 38-day period, using CDC light traps to monitor mosquito populations. On day 8, ASB solution in the control site and ATSB solution in the treatment site were sprayed using a hand-pump on patches of vegetation. Samples of female mosquitoes were age-graded to determine the impact of ATSB treatment on vector longevity.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Immediately after spraying ATSB in the treatment site, the relative abundance of female and male <it>An. gambiae </it>s.l. declined about 90% from pre-treatment levels and remained low. In the treatment site, most females remaining after ATSB treatment had not completed a single gonotrophic cycle, and only 6% had completed three or more gonotrophic cycles compared with 37% pre-treatment. In the control site sprayed with ASB (without toxin), the proportion of females completing three or more gonotrophic cycles increased from 28.5% pre-treatment to 47.5% post-treatment. In the control site, detection of dye marker in over half of the females and males provided direct evidence that the mosquitoes were feeding on the sprayed solutions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study in Mali shows that even a single application of ATSB can substantially decrease malaria vector population densities and longevity. It is likely that ATSB methods can be used as a new powerful tool for the control of malaria vectors, particularly since this approach is highly effective for mosquito control, technologically simple, inexpensive, and environmentally safe.</p

On The Potential of Minimal Flavour Violation

Assuming the Minimal Flavour Violation hypothesis, we derive the general scalar potential for fields whose background values are the Yukawa couplings. We analyze the minimum of the potential and discuss the fine-tuning required to dynamically generate the mass hierarchies and the mixings between different quark generations. Two main cases are considered, corresponding to Yukawa interactions being effective operators of dimension five or six (or, equivalently, resulting from bi-fundamental and fundamental scalar fields, respectively). At the renormalizable and classical level, no mixing is naturally induced from dimension five Yukawa operators. On the contrary, from dimension six Yukawa operators one mixing angle and a strong mass hierarchy among the generations result.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figures; Note added in proof on the stability of the minima of the scalar potential; results unchanged; references adde

Neutrino physics at large colliders

Large colliders are not sensitive to light neutrino masses and character, but they can produce new heavy neutrinos, allowing also for the determination of their Dirac or Majorana nature. We review the discovery limits at the next generation of large colliders.Comment: LaTeX 32 pages. This review summarises and extends work presented at several conferences. To appear in the proceedings of CORFU2005. References adde

Flavoured soft leptogenesis and natural values of the B term

We revisit flavour effects in soft leptogenesis relaxing the assumption of universality for the soft supersymmetry breaking terms. We find that with respect to the case in which the heavy sneutrinos decay with equal rates and equal CP asymmetries for all lepton flavours, hierarchical flavour configurations can enhance the efficiency by more than two orders of magnitude. This translates in more than three order of magnitude with respect to the one-flavour approximation. We verify that lepton flavour equilibration effects related to off-diagonal soft slepton masses are ineffective for damping these large enhancements. We show that soft leptogenesis can be successful for unusual values of the relevant parameters, allowing for $B\sim {\cal O}({\rm TeV})$ and for values of the washout parameter up to $m_{\rm eff}/m_* \sim 5\times 10^{3}$.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures postscript, Minor changes to match the published version in JHE

Minimal flavour violation extensions of the seesaw

We analyze the most natural formulations of the minimal lepton flavour violation hypothesis compatible with a type-I seesaw structure with three heavy singlet neutrinos N, and satisfying the requirement of being predictive, in the sense that all LFV effects can be expressed in terms of low energy observables. We find a new interesting realization based on the flavour group $SU(3)_e\times SU(3)_{\ell+N}$ (being $e$ and $\ell$ respectively the SU(2) singlet and doublet leptons). An intriguing feature of this realization is that, in the normal hierarchy scenario for neutrino masses, it allows for sizeable enhancements of $\mu \to e$ transitions with respect to LFV processes involving the $\tau$ lepton. We also discuss how the symmetries of the type-I seesaw allow for a strong suppression of the N mass scale with respect to the scale of lepton number breaking, without implying a similar suppression for possible mechanisms of N productionComment: 14 pages, 6 figure

An evaluation of enteral nutrition practices and nutritional provision in children during the entire length of stay in critical care

&lt;b&gt;Background&lt;/b&gt; Provision of optimal nutrition in children in critical care is often challenging. This study evaluated exclusive enteral nutrition (EN) provision practices and explored predictors of energy intake and delay of EN advancement in critically ill children.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Methods&lt;/b&gt; Data on intake and EN practices were collected on a daily basis and compared against predefined targets and dietary reference values in a paediatric intensive care unit. Factors associated with intake and advancement of EN were explored.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Results&lt;/b&gt; Data were collected from 130 patients and 887 nutritional support days (NSDs). Delay to initiate EN was longer in patients from both the General Surgical and congenital heart defect (CHD) Surgical groups [Median (IQR); CHD Surgical group: 20.3 (16.4) vs General Surgical group: 11.4 (53.5) vs Medical group: 6.5 (10.9) hours; p &lt;= 0.001]. Daily fasting time per patient was significantly longer in patients from the General Surgical and CHD Surgical groups than those from the Medical group [% of 24 h, Median (IQR); CHD Surgical group: 24.0 (29.2) vs General Surgical group: 41.7 (66.7) vs Medical group: 9.4 (21.9); p &lt;= 0.001]. A lower proportion of fluids was delivered as EN per patient (45% vs 73%) or per NSD (56% vs 73%) in those from the CHD Surgical group compared with those with medical conditions. Protein and energy requirements were achieved in 38% and 33% of the NSDs. In a substantial proportion of NSDs, minimum micronutrient recommendations were not met particularly in those patients from the CHD Surgical group. A higher delivery of fluid requirements (p &lt; 0.05) and a greater proportion of these delivered as EN (p &lt; 0.001) were associated with median energy intake during stay and delay of EN advancement. Fasting (31%), fluid restriction (39%) for clinical reasons, procedures requiring feed cessation and establishing EN (22%) were the most common reasons why target energy requirements were not met.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt; &lt;b&gt;Conclusions&lt;/b&gt; Provision of optimal EN support remains challenging and varies during hospitalisation and among patients. Delivery of EN should be prioritized over other "non-nutritional" fluids whenever this is possible.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt

Leptogenesis in the presence of exact flavor symmetries

In models with flavor symmetries in the leptonic sector leptogenesis can take place in a very different way compared to the standard leptogenesis scenario. We study the generation of a $B-L$ asymmetry in these kind of models in the flavor symmetric phase pointing out that successful leptogenesis requires (i) the right-handed neutrinos to lie in different representations of the flavor group; (ii) the flavons to be lighter at least that one of the right-handed neutrino representations. When these conditions are satisfied leptogenesis proceeds due to new contributions to the CP violating asymmetry and -depending on the specific model- in several stages. We demonstrate the validity of these arguments by studying in detail the generation of the $B-L$ asymmetry in a scenario of a concrete $A_4$ flavor model realization.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures; version 2: A few clarifications added. Version matches publication in JHE