High‐Speed Deterministic‐Latency Serial IO

In digital systems, serial IO at speeds in the range from 1 to 20 Gbps is realized by means of dedicated transceivers, named serializer-deserializers (SerDeses). In general, due to their internal architecture, the data transfer delay, or the latency, may vary after a reset of the device. On the other hand, some applications, such as high-speed transfer protocols for analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters, trigger and data acquisition systems, clock distribution, synchronization and control of radio equipment need this delay to be constant at each reset. In this chapter, we focus on a serial IO architecture based on configurable transceivers embedded in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). We will show how it is possible to achieve deterministic-latency operation in a line-code-independent way. As a case study, we will consider a synchronous 2.5-Gbps serial link based on an 8b10b line code

Cardioplegia custodiol nell'intervento di Switch Arterioso: analisi di biomarkers plasmatici e correlazione con outcomes clinici nell'immediato postoperatorio

SOMMARIO Stato dell’arte: Lo scopo di questo studio è descrivere le concentrazioni e la cinetica plasmatica del Peptide Natriuretico Cerebrale (BNP), della Troponina I (TnI) e della Cistatina-C (Cys-C) nel periodo postoperatorio in neonati sottoposti ad intervento di “Switch Arterioso” (ASO) mediante cardioplegia Custodiol, inoltre testare le correlazioni tra questi biomarkers plasmatici e gli immediati outcomes clinici. Materiali e Metodi: Sono stati prospetticamente arruolati 29 neonati sottoposti ad ASO. Tutti i neonati hanno ricevuto la cardioplegia Custodiol. Esami ematochimici sono stati effettuati preoperatoriamente (un giorno prima), all’arrivo in terapia intensiva e poi a 6, 12, 24, e 48 h dopo chirurgia. Risultati: Il picco di TnI (valore medio 17.23±7.0ng/mL) è stato registrato tra l’arrivo in terapia intensiva e la sesta ora, poi si è avuto un costante decremento. La TnI ha avuto una buona correlazione con il tempo di supporto inotropo (r=0.560, p=0.0015) e con il tempo di permanenza in terapia intensiva (r =0.407, p=0.028), meno significativa con il tempo di ventilazione e di degenza ospedaliera totale (r=0.37, p=0.0451 e r=0.385, p=0.0404). Il picco di BNP (valore medio 4773.79±2724.52ng/L) è stato registrato nel periodo preoperatorio con un costante decremento dopo l’intervento e non ha mostrato significative correlazioni con gli outcomes clinici analizzati. La CyS-C ha presentato livelli elevati nel periodo preoperatorio, un decremento durante la fase operatoria e successivamente un costante incremento dall’arrivo in terapia intensiva con un picco a 48h (valore medio 1.76±0.35 mg/L). Il picco di CyS-C, inoltre, ha mostrato una buona correlazione con il picco di creatinina plasmatica (r=0.579, p=0.0009), ma non con gli altri outcomes clinici esaminati. Conclusioni: Il nostro studio ha dimostrato una correlazione significativa tra il picco di TnI e gli outcomes clinici analizzati nell’immediato postoperatorio di neonati sottoposti ad intervento di “Switch Arterioso”. Gli altri biomarkers analizzati, BNP e CyS-C, non hanno dimostrato una correlazione diretta

Local knowledge to support environmental resource management in data-poor regions

EnThe importance of shared decision-making processes in water management derives from the awareness of the inadequacy of traditional–i.e.engineering–approaches in dealing with complex and ill-structured problems.It is becoming increasingly obvious that traditional problem solving and decision support techniques,based on optimisation and factual knowledge,need to be combined with stakeholder-based policy design and implementation.The aim of our research is the definition of a Community-based Decision Support System (CBDSS),able to facilitate integration of local and scientific knowledge.The system has been applied to support public involvement in the drawing up of the river Idro management plan

Emulating the GLink Chip-Set with FPGA Serial Transceivers in the ATLAS Level-1 Muon Trigger

Many High Energy Physics experiments based their serial links on the Agilent HDMP-1032/34A serializer/deserializer chip-set (or GLink). This success was mainly due to the fact that this pair of chips was able to transfer data at \sim 1 Gb/s with a deterministic latency, fixed after each power up or reset of the link. Despite this unique timing feature, Agilent discontinued the production and no compatible commercial off-the-shelf chip-sets are available. The ATLAS Level-1 Muon trigger includes some serial links based on GLink in order to transfer data from the detector to the counting room. The transmission side of the links will not be upgraded, however a replacement for the receivers in the counting room in case of failures is needed. In this paper, we present a solution to replace GLink transmitters and receivers. Our design is based on the gigabit serial IO (GTP) embedded in a Xilinx Virtex 5 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). We present the architecture and we discuss parameters of the implementation such as latency and resource occupation. We compare the GLink chip-set and the GTP-based emulator in terms of latency, eye diagram and power dissipation

Characterized subgroups of the circle group

A subgroup H of the circle group T is said to be characterized by a sequence u = (u(n))(n is an element of N) of integers if H = {x is an element of T : u(n) x -> 0}. The characterized subgroups of T are known also under the name topologically u-torsion subgroups. This survey paper is dedicated to the characterized subgroups of T: we recall their main properties and collect most of the basic results from the wide bibliography, following, when possible, the historical line, and trying to show the deep roots of this topic in several areas of Mathematics. Due to this universality of the topic, many notions and results were found independently by various authors working unaware of each other, so our effort is also directed towards giving credit to all of them to the best of our knowledge. We provide also some background on the notions of characterized subgroup and topologically u-torsion subgroup in the general case of topological abelian groups, where they differ very substantially

Comparision of the frying performance of olive oil and palm superolein

Deep-fat frying is an important method of food preparation in wich foods are immersed in hot oil. Repeated use of frying oils is a common practice and in the presence of atmospheric oxygen it produces various undesiderable reactions in used oils. Stable frying oils usually required low linolenic acid (LnA < 3%). The aim of this study was to establish the behaviour of palm superolein (PSO) (OA 45%, LA 12.5%, LnA 0.2%) and olive oil (OO) during repeated, discontinous deep frying of French fries. The behaviour of the oils under controlled heating conditions was also studied by maintaining all of the process variables the same as those in deep frying except that there was no food in the oil. The PSO selected to be tested in this study may represent an alternative to OO as a frying medium. Although PSO presented a faster increase in some oxidation indices, such as free acid and total polar compounds, for other indicators, PSO showed better behaviour than OO (less formation of C8:0 and lower peroxide value)

A threshold mechanism ensures minimum-path flow in lightning discharge

A well-known property of linear resistive electrical networks is that the current distribution minimizes the total dissipated power. When the circuit includes resistors with nonlinear monotonic characteristic, the current distribution minimizes in general a diferent functional. We show that, if the nonlinear characteristic is a threshold-like function and the current generator is concentrated in a single point, as in the case of lightning or dielectric discharge, then the current flow is concentrated along a single path, which is a minimum path to the ground with respect to the threshold. We also propose a dynamic model that explains and qualitatively reproduces the lightning transient behavior: initial generation of several plasma branches and subsequent dismissal of all branches but the one reaching the ground frst, which is the optimal one