665 research outputs found
Dynamics of femtosecond laser absorption of fused silica in the ablation regime
International audienceWe investigate the ultrafast absorption dynamics of fused silica irradiated by a single 500 fs laser pulse in the context of micromachining applications. A 60-fs-resolution pump-probe experiment that measures the reflectivity and transmissivity of the target under excitation is developed to reveal the evolution of plasma absorption. Above the ablation threshold, an overcritical plasma with highly non-equilibrium conditions is evidenced in a thin layer at the surface. The maximum electron density is reached at a delay of 0:5 ps after the peak of the pump pulse, which is a strong indication of the occurrence of electronic avalanche. The results are further analyzed to determine the actual feedback of the evolution of the optical properties of the material on the pump pulse. We introduce an important new quantity, namely, the duration of absorption of the laser by the created plasma, corresponding to the actual timespan of laser absorption by inverse Bremsstrahlung. Our results indicate an increasing contribution of plasma absorption to the total material absorption upon raising the excitation fluence above the ablation threshold. The role of transient optical properties during the energy deposition stage is characterized and our results emphasize the necessity to take it into account for better understanding and control of femtosecond laser-dielectrics interaction
Psychological Safety and Norm Clarity in Software Engineering Teams
In the software engineering industry today, companies primarily conduct their
work in teams. To increase organizational productivity, it is thus crucial to
know the factors that affect team effectiveness. Two team-related concepts that
have gained prominence lately are psychological safety and team norms. Still,
few studies exist that explore these in a software engineering context.
Therefore, with the aim of extending the knowledge of these concepts, we
examined if psychological safety and team norm clarity associate positively
with software developers' self-assessed team performance and job satisfaction,
two important elements of effectiveness.
We collected industry survey data from practitioners (N = 217) in 38
development teams working for five different organizations. The result of
multiple linear regression analyses indicates that both psychological safety
and team norm clarity predict team members' self-assessed performance and job
satisfaction. The findings also suggest that clarity of norms is a stronger
(30\% and 71\% stronger, respectively) predictor than psychological safety.
This research highlights the need to examine, in more detail, the
relationship between social norms and software development. The findings of
this study could serve as an empirical baseline for such, future work.Comment: Submitted to CHASE'201
Opal web services for biomedical applications
Biomedical applications have become increasingly complex, and they often require large-scale high-performance computing resources with a large number of processors and memory. The complexity of application deployment and the advances in cluster, grid and cloud computing require new modes of support for biomedical research. Scientific Software as a Service (sSaaS) enables scalable and transparent access to biomedical applications through simple standards-based Web interfaces. Towards this end, we built a production web server (http://ws.nbcr.net) in August 2007 to support the bioinformatics application called MEME. The server has grown since to include docking analysis with AutoDock and AutoDock Vina, electrostatic calculations using PDB2PQR and APBS, and off-target analysis using SMAP. All the applications on the servers are powered by Opal, a toolkit that allows users to wrap scientific applications easily as web services without any modification to the scientific codes, by writing simple XML configuration files. Opal allows both web forms-based access and programmatic access of all our applications. The Opal toolkit currently supports SOAP-based Web service access to a number of popular applications from the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR) and affiliated collaborative and service projects. In addition, Opal’s programmatic access capability allows our applications to be accessed through many workflow tools, including Vision, Kepler, Nimrod/K and VisTrails. From mid-August 2007 to the end of 2009, we have successfully executed 239 814 jobs. The number of successfully executed jobs more than doubled from 205 to 411 per day between 2008 and 2009. The Opal-enabled service model is useful for a wide range of applications. It provides for interoperation with other applications with Web Service interfaces, and allows application developers to focus on the scientific tool and workflow development. Web server availability: http://ws.nbcr.net
Velocity Dispersion of Dissolving OB Associations Affected by External Pressure of Formation Environment
This paper presents a possible way to understand dissolution of OB
associations (or groups). Assuming rapid escape of parental cloud gas from
associations, we show that the shadow of the formation environment for
associations can be partially imprinted on the velocity dispersion at their
dissolution. This conclusion is not surprising as long as associations are
formed in a multiphase interstellar medium, because the external pressure
should suppress expansion caused by the internal motion of the parental clouds.
Our model predicts a few km s as the internal velocity dispersion.
Observationally, the internal velocity dispersion is km s which
is smaller than our prediction. This suggests that the dissipation of internal
energy happens before the formation of OB associations.Comment: 6 pages. AJ accepte
Decoupling of DNA methylation and activity of intergenic LINE-1 promoters in colorectal cancer
<p>Hypomethylation of LINE-1 repeats in cancer has been proposed as the main mechanism behind their activation; this assumption, however, was based on findings from early studies that were biased toward young and transpositionally active elements. Here, we investigate the relationship between methylation of 2 intergenic, transpositionally inactive LINE-1 elements and expression of the LINE-1 chimeric transcript (LCT) 13 and LCT14 driven by their antisense promoters (L1-ASP). Our data from DNA modification, expression, and 5′RACE analyses suggest that colorectal cancer methylation in the regions analyzed is not always associated with LCT repression. Consistent with this, in HCT116 colorectal cancer cells lacking DNA methyltransferases DNMT1 or DNMT3B, LCT13 expression decreases, while cells lacking both DNMTs or treated with the DNMT inhibitor 5-azacytidine (5-aza) show no change in LCT13 expression. Interestingly, levels of the H4K20me3 histone modification are inversely associated with LCT13 and LCT14 expression. Moreover, at these LINE-1s, H4K20me3 levels rather than DNA methylation seem to be good predictor of their sensitivity to 5-aza treatment. Therefore, by studying individual LINE-1 promoters we have shown that in some cases these promoters can be active without losing methylation; in addition, we provide evidence that other factors (e.g., H4K20me3 levels) play prominent roles in their regulation.</p
The mass-loss rates of red supergiants and the de Jager prescription
Mass loss of red supergiants (RSG) is important for the evolution of massive
stars, but is not fully explained. Several empirical prescriptions have been
proposed, trying to express the mass-loss rate (Mdot) as a function of
fundamental stellar parameters (mass, luminosity, effective temperature). Our
goal is to test whether the de Jager et al. (1988) prescription, used in some
stellar evolution models, is still valid in view of more recent mass-loss
determinations. By considering 40 Galactic RSGs presenting an infrared excess
and an IRAS 60-mu flux larger than 2 Jy, and assuming a gas-to-dust mass ratio
of 200, it is found that the de Jager rate agrees within a factor 4 with most
Mdot estimates based on the 60-mu signal. It is also in agreement with 6 of the
only 8 Galactic RSGs for which Mdot can be measured more directly through
observations of the circumstellar gas. The two objects that do not follow the
de Jager prescription (by an order of magnitude) are mu Cep and NML Cyg. We
have also considered the RSGs of the Magellanic Clouds. Thanks to the works of
Groenewegen et al. (2009) and Bonanos et al. (2010), we find that the RSGs of
the SMC have Mdots consistent with the de Jager rate scaled by
(Z/Zsun)**(alpha), where Z is the metallicity and alpha is 0.7. The situation
is less clear for the LMC RSGs. In particular, for luminosties larger than
1.6E+05 Lsun, one finds numerous RSGs (except WOH-G64) having Mdot
significantly smaller than the de Jager rate, and indicating that Mdot would no
longer increase with L. Before this odd situation is confirmed through further
analysis of LMC RSGs, we suggest to keep the de Jager prescription unchanged at
solar metallicity in the stellar evolutionary models and to apply a
(Z/Zsun)**0.7 dependence.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysic
Deterministic Preparation of a Tunable Few-Fermion System
Systems consisting of few interacting fermions are the building blocks of
matter with atoms and nuclei being the most prominent examples. We have created
an artificial few-body quantum system with complete control over the system's
quantum state using ultracold fermionic atoms in an optical dipole trap. We
deterministically prepare ground state systems consisting of one to ten
particles with fidelities of ~ 90%. We can tune the inter-particle interactions
to arbitrary values using a Feshbach resonance and have observed the
interaction-induced energy shift for a pair of repulsively interacting atoms.
With this work, quantum simulation of strongly correlated fewbody systems has
become possible. In addition, these microscopic quantum systems can be used as
building blocks for scalable quantum information processing.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Efficiency improvement of a ground coupled heat pump system from energy management
The installed capacity of an air conditioning system is usually higher than the average cooling or heating
demand along the year. So, most of the time, the system is working under its actual capacity. In this
contribution, we study the way to improve the efficiency of a ground coupled heat pump air conditioning
system by adapting its produced thermal energy to the actual thermal demand. For this purpose, an air
conditioning system composed by a ground coupled heat pump and a central fan coil linked to an office
located in a cooling dominated area was simulated, and a new management strategy aiming to diminish
electrical consumption was developed under the basic constraint that comfort requirements are kept.
This strategy takes advantage of the possibility of managing the air flow in the fan, the water mass flows
in the internal and external hydraulic systems, and the set point temperature in the heat pump to
achieve this objective. The electrical consumption of the system is calculated for the new management
strategy and compared with the results obtained for a conventional one, resulting in estimated energy
savings around 30%This work has been supported by the Spanish Government under projects "Modelado y simulacion de sistemas energeticos complejos" (2005 Ramon y Cajal program), "Modelado, simulacion y validacion experimental de la transferencia de calor en el entorno de la edificacion" (ENE2008-0059/CON). A. Sala is grateful to the financial support of grants DPI2008-06731-c02-01 (Spanish Government), and Generalitat Valenciana Prometeo/2008/088.Pardo García, N.; Montero Reguera, ÁE.; Sala Piqueras, A.; Martos Torres, J.; Urchueguía Schölzel, JF. (2011). Efficiency improvement of a ground coupled heat pump system from energy management. Applied Thermal Engineering. 31(2):391-398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2010.09.016S39139831
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