6,720 research outputs found
A strategic look at how to extend your digital footprint
Purpose: To provide an overview of the key strategic questions that need to be considered when evaluating whether or not to extend a company’s reach across multiple digital platforms. Design/methodology/approach: The viewpoint presented in this paper reflects both the practical experience of conceiving, launching and implementing a multi-platform digital strategy, combined with an academic insight into branding and strategic resource allocation and management. Findings: Before extending your digital footprint, executives need to consider several key questions that will impact on the relative success of their digital strategy. Practical implications: A digital strategy that extends a company’s reach across multiple platforms needs to be considered in terms of delivering against corporate and business level strategy in order to be effective. Originality/value: A unique combination of practical experience fused with academic knowledge on the key questions that should be considered in order to successfully design and implement a multi-platform digital strategy. Keywords: Digital Media, Online Marketing, Digital Distribution, Multi-platform, Brand Building, Customer Relationship Managemen
Chemical mechanical polishing of thin film diamond
The demonstration that Nanocrystalline Diamond (NCD) can retain the superior
Young's modulus (1,100 GPa) of single crystal diamond twinned with its ability
to be grown at low temperatures (<450 {\deg}C) has driven a revival into the
growth and applications of NCD thin films. However, owing to the competitive
growth of crystals the resulting film has a roughness that evolves with film
thickness, preventing NCD films from reaching their full potential in devices
where a smooth film is required. To reduce this roughness, films have been
polished using Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP). A Logitech Tribo CMP tool
equipped with a polyurethane/polyester polishing cloth and an alkaline
colloidal silica polishing fluid has been used to polish NCD films. The
resulting films have been characterised with Atomic Force Microscopy, Scanning
Electron Microscopy and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. Root mean square
roughness values have been reduced from 18.3 nm to 1.7 nm over 25 {\mu}m,
with roughness values as low as 0.42 nm over ~ 0.25 {\mu}m. A polishing
mechanism of wet oxidation of the surface, attachment of silica particles and
subsequent shearing away of carbon has also been proposed.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Protected gates for topological quantum field theories
We study restrictions on locality-preserving unitary logical gates for
topological quantum codes in two spatial dimensions. A locality-preserving
operation is one which maps local operators to local operators --- for example,
a constant-depth quantum circuit of geometrically local gates, or evolution for
a constant time governed by a geometrically-local bounded-strength Hamiltonian.
Locality-preserving logical gates of topological codes are intrinsically fault
tolerant because spatially localized errors remain localized, and hence
sufficiently dilute errors remain correctable. By invoking general properties
of two-dimensional topological field theories, we find that the
locality-preserving logical gates are severely limited for codes which admit
non-abelian anyons; in particular, there are no locality-preserving logical
gates on the torus or the sphere with M punctures if the braiding of anyons is
computationally universal. Furthermore, for Ising anyons on the M-punctured
sphere, locality-preserving gates must be elements of the logical Pauli group.
We derive these results by relating logical gates of a topological code to
automorphisms of the Verlinde algebra of the corresponding anyon model, and by
requiring the logical gates to be compatible with basis changes in the logical
Hilbert space arising from local F-moves and the mapping class group.Comment: 50 pages, many figures, v3: updated to match published versio
CB1 Receptor Antagonism Blocks Stress-Potentiated Reinstatement of Cocaine Seeking in Rats
Rationale
Under some conditions, stress, rather than directly triggering cocaine seeking, potentiates reinstatement to other stimuli, including a subthreshold cocaine dose. The mechanisms responsible for stress-potentiated reinstatement are not well defined. Endocannabinoid signaling is increased by stress and regulates synaptic transmission in brain regions implicated in motivated behavior. Objectives
The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that cannabinoid type 1 receptor (CB1R) signaling is required for stress-potentiated reinstatement of cocaine seeking in rats. Methods
Following i.v. cocaine self-administration (2 h access/day) and extinction in male rats, footshock stress alone does not reinstate cocaine seeking but reinstatement is observed when footshock is followed by an injection of an otherwise subthreshold dose of cocaine (2.5 mg/kg, i.p.). CB1R involvement was tested by systemic administration of the CB1R antagonist AM251 (0, 1, or 3 mg/kg, i.p.) prior to testing for stress-potentiated reinstatement. Results
Stress-potentiated reinstatement was blocked by both 1 and 3 mg/kg AM251. By contrast, AM251 only attenuated food-reinforced lever pressing at the higher dose (i.e., 3 mg/kg) and did not affect locomotor activity at either dose tested. Neither high-dose cocaine-primed reinstatement (10 mg/kg, i.p.) nor footshock stress-triggered reinstatement following long-access cocaine self-administration (6 h access/day) was affected by AM251 pretreatment. Footshock stress increased concentrations of both endocannabinoids, N-arachidonylethanolamine and 2-arachidonoylglycerol, in regions of the prefrontal cortex. Conclusions
These findings demonstrate that footshock stress increases prefrontal cortical endocannabinoids and stress-potentiated reinstatement is CB1R-dependent, suggesting that CB1R is a potential therapeutic target for relapse prevention, particularly in individuals whose cocaine use is stress-related
Twill: A hybrid microcontroller-FPGA framework for parallelizing single-threaded C programs
Increasingly System-On-A-Chip platforms which incorporate both microprocessors and re-programmable logic are being utilized across several fields ranging from the automotive industry to network infrastructure. Unfortunately, the development tools accompanying these products leave much to be desired, requiring knowledge of both traditional embedded systems languages like C and hardware description languages like Verilog. We propose to bridge this gap with Twill, a truly automatic hybrid compiler that can take advantage of the parallelism inherent in these platforms. Twill can extract long-running threads from single threaded C code and distribute these threads across the hardware and software domains to more fully utilize the asymmetric characteristics between processors and the embedded reconfigurable logic fabric. We show that Twill provides a significant performance increase on the CHStone benchmarks with an average 1.63 times increase over the pure hardware approach and an increase of 22.2 times on average over the pure software approach while in general decreasing the area required by the reconfigurable logic compared to the pure hardware approach
Recruitment, growth and mortality of an Antarctic hexactinellid sponge, Anoxycalyx joubini.
Polar ecosystems are sensitive to climate forcing, and we often lack baselines to evaluate changes. Here we report a nearly 50-year study in which a sudden shift in the population dynamics of an ecologically important, structure-forming hexactinellid sponge, Anoxycalyx joubini was observed. This is the largest Antarctic sponge, with individuals growing over two meters tall. In order to investigate life history characteristics of Antarctic marine invertebrates, artificial substrata were deployed at a number of sites in the southern portion of the Ross Sea between 1967 and 1975. Over a 22-year period, no growth or settlement was recorded for A. joubini on these substrata; however, in 2004 and 2010, A. joubini was observed to have settled and grown to large sizes on some but not all artificial substrata. This single settlement and growth event correlates with a region-wide shift in phytoplankton productivity driven by the calving of a massive iceberg. We also report almost complete mortality of large sponges followed over 40 years. Given our warming global climate, similar system-wide changes are expected in the future
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