Debris Flow Risk Assessment and Land-Use Planning – A Case Study of Jhonglun Hot Spring Area

The Jhonglun Scenic Area in Chiayi County, is famous for its hot spring, the region was hit by debris flow with tremendous losses and resulted with dramatic change of the landscape during Typhoon Morakot in 2009. The most effective strategy for reducing natural hazard risks is through land-use planning. Following the concept of Risk=Hazard*Exposure*Vulnerability, this study conducted risk identification through the collection of landslide inventory and history debris flow hazard mapping of Chiayi DF051 potential debris flow torrent. Together with elements at risk information from field investigations, the risk analysis was conducted with several return periods debris flow simulation to recognize the possible economic losses and fatalities by debris flow. The identified high risk areas in Jhonglun Scenic Area were compared to the current special district planning to understand the spatial distribution of high risk areas. The result shows that some of the designated zones were among the areas with high debris flow risks, which further indicates that land-use planning should consider the consequences of natural hazards. The result of this study provides one of the first steps for land use planning restrictions within the potential debris flow region

A New Global Router for Modern Designs

Abstract -In this paper, we present a new global router, NTHU-Route, for modern designs. NTHU-Route is based on iterative rip-ups and reroutes, and several techniques are proposed to enhance our global router. These techniques include (1) a history based cost function which helps to distribute overflow during iterative rip-ups and reroutes, (2) an adaptive multi-source multi-sink maze routing method to improve the wirelength of maze routing, (3) a congested region identification method to specify the order for nets to be ripped up and rerouted, and (4) a refinement process to further reduce overflow when iterative history based rip-ups and reroutes reach bottleneck. Compared with two state-of-the-art works on ISPD98 benchmarks, NTHU-Route outperforms them in both overflow and wirelength. For the much larger designs from the ISPD07 benchmark suite, our solution quality is better than or comparable to the best results reported in the ISPD07 routing contest. I Introduction In the recent years, feature size continues to shrink. Although the device becomes smaller and faster, the shrinkage increases the wire resistance and hence interconnect delay. Interconnect delay has replaced transistor delay as the main determinant of chip performance. Therefore the routing problem is becoming even more important in VLSI design. Typically, the routing problem can be divided into two steps due to the problem complexity: global routing and detailed routing. During global routing, nets are connected on a coarse-grain grid graph with capacity constraints. Then detailed routing follows the solution in global routing to find the exact routing solution. The quality of global routing affects timing, power and density in the chip area, and thus global routing is a very important stage in the design cycle. Recent global routing techniques can be roughly categorized into two classes: multicommodity flow based techniques and rip-up and reroute techniques. Multicommodity flow based techniques Rip-up and reroute approach starts by routing each net without considering congestion. After routing all nets, congested areas can be identified and the nets in those areas are ripped up and rerouted to find less congested routes. This approach is a sequential one since the net to be ripped up and rerouted has to follow a specific order. Therefore the routing order in rip-up and reroute techniques affects the solution quality a lot. Chi Dispersion In this paper, we present a new global router, NTHU-Route, for modern designs. NTHU-Route is based on iterative rip-ups and reroutes, and several techniques are proposed to enhance our global router. These techniques include (1) a history based cost function which helps to distribute overflow during iterative rip-ups and reroutes, (2) an adaptive multi-source multi-sink maze routing method to improve the wirelength of maze routing, (3) a congested region identification method to specify the order for nets to be ripped up and rerouted, and (4) a refinement process to further reduce overflow when iterative history based rip-ups and reroutes reach bottleneck. We compare our results with two state-of-the-art works, BoxRouter and FastRoute, on ISPD98 benchmarks. Our global router solves all benchmarks without any overflow and respectively reduces the wirelength over BoxRouter and FastRoute by 1.93% and 2.59% on average. We also perform our router on ISPD07 benchmarks which contain multi-layer designs with larger size. The experiments show that our router obtains the solution with least overflow when comparing with the best results reported in the ISPD07 global routing contest. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II gives the preliminaries including the problem formulation and introduction for some routing techniques. In section III, we present our global router in detail. Section IV provides the experimental results and we conclude the paper in section V

Paxillin facilitates timely neurite initiation on soft-substrate environments by interacting with the endocytic machinery.

Neurite initiation is the first step in neuronal development and occurs spontaneously in soft tissue environments. Although the mechanisms regulating the morphology of migratory cells on rigid substrates in cell culture are widely known, how soft environments modulate neurite initiation remains elusive. Using hydrogel cultures, pharmacologic inhibition, and genetic approaches, we reveal that paxillin-linked endocytosis and adhesion are components of a bistable switch controlling neurite initiation in a substrate modulus-dependent manner. On soft substrates, most paxillin binds to endocytic factors and facilitates vesicle invagination, elevating neuritogenic Rac1 activity and expression of genes encoding the endocytic machinery. By contrast, on rigid substrates, cells develop extensive adhesions, increase RhoA activity and sequester paxillin from the endocytic machinery, thereby delaying neurite initiation. Our results highlight paxillin as a core molecule in substrate modulus-controlled morphogenesis and define a mechanism whereby neuronal cells respond to environments exhibiting varying mechanical properties

Urodynamic and Bladder Diary Factors Predict Overactive Bladder-wet in Women: A Comparison With Overactive Bladder-dry

Purpose To identify factors predicting the presence of overactive bladder syndrome (OAB)-wet, compared with OAB-dry. Methods Between September 2007 and September 2013, the medical records of 623 women with OAB who completed a 3-day bladder diary and underwent urodynamic studies in a medical center were retrospectively reviewed. OAB-wet was diagnosed in patients who complained of at least one episode of urgency incontinence in the previous month; otherwise, OAB-dry was diagnosed. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was used to predict the presence of OAB-wet. Results Age (odds ratio [OR], 1.05; P<0.001), maximal flow rate (Qmax) (OR,1.06; P<0.001), voided volume (OR, 0.996; P=0.001), detrusor pressure at maximal flow rate (PdetQmax) (OR, 1.02; P=0.003), urgency episodes (OR, 1.04; P<0.001) and urodynamic stress incontinence (OR,1.78; P=0.01) were independent predictors for the presence of OAB-wet vs. OAB-dry. If we use bladder contractility index as a variable for multivariable logistic regression analysis, bladder contractility index (OR, 1.012; P<0.001) become an independent predictor for OAB-wet. Conclusions A smaller bladder capacity and more frequent urgency episodes were predictors of OAB-wet, and the above findings indicate that OAB-wet and OAB-dry might be a continuum of OAB. Old age, high Qmax, high PdetQmax and urodynamic stress incontinence were also predictors for OAB-wet, and the above results reveal that OAB-wet and OAB-dry have partially different clinical and urodynamic features. Further studies might be performed to elucidate whether different treatment strategies between OAB-dry and OAB-wet can improve treatment efficacy

Multi-Segment Foam Flow Field in Ambient Pressure Polymer Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell

In order to produce low-cost flow field plates for polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, we used nickel foam in this study rather than conventional flow field. Nickel foam has high electron conductivity, thermal conductivity, and mechanical strength. Electrochemical impedance spectrum analysis is carried out to evidence the use on flow field plates of nickel foam. From the impedance fitting results, the nickel foam cases showed the lower contact resistance than the serpentine. However, such plates have poor performance at low temperatures and ambient pressure. In order to overcome this, a multi-segment foam flow field is designed in this study. This increased the performance of the polarization curve by 70% from 162 to 275.5 mw cm-2 than the original nickel foam design. Also, the mass transfer resistance was reduced, and the Warburg impedance value of the operation voltage decreased by 0.4 V. The numerical analysis results demonstrate that increased segment numbers can increase the performance of the multi-segment foam flow field

De novo duplication of Xq22.1→q24 with a disruption of the NXF gene cluster in a mentally retarded woman with short stature and premature ovarian failure

AbstractObjectiveTo present molecular cytogenetic characterization of a de novo duplication of Xq22.1→q24 in a mentally retarded woman with short stature and premature ovarian failure.Materials and MethodsA 19-year-old woman presented with psychomotor retardation, developmental delay, mental retardation, short stature, low body weight, general muscle hypotonia, distal muscle hypotrophy of the lower extremities, elongated digits, scanty pubic and axillary hair, hypoplastic external female genitalia, and secondary amenorrhea but no clinical features of Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease. Conventional cytogenetic analysis revealed a karyotype of 46,X,dup(X)(q22.1q24). Fluorescence in situ hybridization determined a direct duplication with a linear tandem orientation. Array comparative genomic hybridization demonstrated partial trisomy Xq [arr cgh Xq22.1q24 (101,490,234–119,070,188 bp)×3] with a 17.6-Mb duplication.ResultsThe duplicated region contained NXF2B, NXF4, NXF3, PLP1, and PGRMC1 genes. There was a disruption of the NXF gene cluster of Xcen-NXF5-NXF2-NXF2B-NXF4-NXF3-Xqter.ConclusionA duplication of Xq22.1→q24 with a disruption of the NXF gene cluster in female patients can be associated with clinical manifestations of mental retardation in addition to short stature and premature ovarian failure

Realization of Polarization Control in High-Order Harmonic Generation

The nature of high-order harmonic generation process limits the harmonics emission to linear polarization. In this paper, we review the recent progress to generate elliptically or circularly polarized high-harmonic EUV pulses. We further demonstrate how complete control of polarization state of isolated high-harmonic pulse can be realized today by noncollinear focusing of two driving pulses with identical ellipticity but counter-rotating helicity. This paper opens a path towards the study of the fastest dynamics--down to attosecond time scales--in circular dichroism of magnetic materials, chiral molecules, and electronic spin motion.Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology; Academia Sinica; Junta de Castilla y León; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators, BBVA Foundation; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades for a Ramón y Cajal; European Social Fund; Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte