Few electron double quantum dot in an isotopically purified 28^{28}Si quantum well

We present a few electron double quantum dot (QD) device defined in an isotopically purified $^{28}$Si quantum well (QW). An electron mobility of $5.5 \cdot 10^4 cm^2(Vs)^{-1}$ is observed in the QW which is the highest mobility ever reported for a 2D electron system in $^{28}$Si. The residual concentration of $^{29}$Si nuclei in the $^{28}$Si QW is lower than $10^{3} ppm$, at the verge where the hyperfine interaction is theoretically no longer expected to dominantly limit the $T_{2}$ spin dephasing time. We also demonstrate a complete suppression of hysteretic gate behavior and charge noise using a negatively biased global top gate.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A framework for service quality assurance using event correlation techniques

Due to the increasing use of service level agreements for the provisioning of IT services, providers have to ensure that the guarantees for the quality of their offered services, expressed by quality of service parameters, are met. These guarantees are endangered by resource malfunctions in the provider’s infrastructure or quality degradations of services which are supplied by subproviders. To optimize the resolution of customer reports about service quality degradations affecting the quality guarantees we propose to apply event correlation techniques. In this paper we present a framework for this new kind of event correlation which is called service-oriented event correlation. The framework bridges the gap between the management of the infrastructure and the offer of services for the customers with respect to the service fault diagnosis. The application of event correlation approaches in the framework is examined in detail.

Spinal epidural abscess: aetiology, predisponent factors and clinical outcomes in a 4-year prospective study

Spinal epidural abscess (SEA) is a rare, but serious, condition with multiple causes. We prospectively studied the aetiology, predisposing factors, and clinical outcomes of SEA in all patients with SEA treated in our hospital's neurosurgical service from 2004 to 2008. For each patient, we recorded the medical history, comorbidities, focus of infection, pathogen(s), and outcome. The 36 patients (19 women and 17 men) ranged in age from 34 to 80years old (mean 57; median 56). The SEA was primary (i.e., due to haematogenous spread) in 16 patients (44%); it was secondary to elective spinal procedures, either injections or surgery, in 20 patients (56%). The duration of follow-up was 12-60months (mean 36; median 37.5). The most common pathogen, Staphylococcus aureus, was found in 18 patients (50%). Patients with primary SEA had different underlying diseases and a wider range of pathogens than those with secondary SEA. Only five patients (14%) had no major comorbidity; 16 of the 20 patients with secondary SEA (44% of the overall group) had undergone spinal surgery before developing the SEA; the treatment of the SEA involved multiple surgical operations in all 16 of these patients, and spinal instrumentation in 5 (14%); 22 patients (61% of the overall group) recovered full

Impact of Gluma Desensitizer on the tensile strength of zirconia crowns bonded to dentin: an in vitro study

This study tested the impact of Gluma Desensitizer on the tensile strength of zirconia crowns bonded to dentin. Human teeth were prepared and randomly divided into six groups (N = 144, n = 24 per group). For each tooth, a zirconia crown was manufactured. The zirconia crowns were cemented with: (1) Panavia21 (PAN), (2) Panavia21 combined with Gluma Desensitizer (PAN-G), (3) RelyX Unicem (RXU), (4) RelyX Unicem combined with Gluma Desensitizer (RXU-G), (5) G-Cem (GCM) and (6) G-Cem combined with Gluma Desensitizer (GCM-G). The initial tensile strength was measured in half (n = 12) of each group and the other half (n = 12) subjected to a chewing machine (1.2 Mio, 49N, 5°C/50°C). The cemented crowns were pulled in a Universal Testing Machine (1mm/min, Zwick Z010) until failure occurred and tensile strength was calculated. Data were analyzed with one-way and two-way ANOVA followed by a post hoc Scheffé test, t test and Kaplan-Meier analysis with a Breslow-Gehan analysis test (α = 0.05). After the chewing simulation, the self-adhesive resin cements combined with Gluma Desensitizer showed significantly higher tensile strength (RXU-G, 12.8 ± 4.3MPa; GCM-G, 13.4 ± 6.2MPa) than PAN (7.3 ± 1.7MPa) and PAN-G (0.9 ± 0.6). Within the groups, PAN, PAN-G and RXU resulted in significantly lower values when compared to the initial tensile strength; the values of all other test groups were stable. In this study, self-adhesive resin cements combined with Gluma Desensitizer reached better long-term stability compared to PAN and PAN-G after chewing simulatio

A Security Cost Modelling Framework for Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are formed through interconnected components capable of computation, communication, sensing and changing the physical world. The development of these systems poses a significant challenge since they have to be designed in a way to ensure cyber-security without impacting their performance. This article presents the Security Cost Modelling Framework (SCMF) and shows supported by an experimental study how it can be used to measure, normalise and aggregate the overall performance of a CPS. Unlike previous studies, our approach uses different metrics to measure the overall performance of a CPS and provides a methodology for normalising the measurement results of different units to a common Cost Unit. Moreover, we show how the Security Costs can be extracted from the overall performance measurements which allows to quantify the overhead imposed by performing security-related tasks. Furthermore, we describe the architecture of our experimental testbed and demonstrate the applicability of SCMF in an experimental study. Our results show that measuring the overall performance and extracting the security costs using SCMF can serve as basis to redesign interactions to achieve the same overall goal at less costs

Analysing Design Approaches for the Power Consumption in Cyber-Physical Systems

The importance of Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications is constantly increasing, especially in the context of Industry 4.0. Architectural decisions are crucial not just for performance, security and resilience reasons but also regarding costs and resource usage. In this paper we analyse two of the fundamental approaches to design control loops (i.e. time-driven and event-driven), show how they can be realised and evaluate their power requirements. Through this the design criteria can be extended also considering the optimization of energy related aspects

Optimized Buffering of Time-Triggered Automotive Software

The development of an automotive system involves the integration of many real-time software functionalities, and it is of utmost importance to guarantee strict timing requirements. However, the recent trend towards multi-core architectures poses significant challenges for the timely transfer of signals between processor cores so as to not violate data consistency. We have studied and adapted an existing buffering mechanism to work specifically for statically scheduled time-triggered systems, called static buffering protocol. We developed further buffering optimisation algorithms and heuristics, to reduce the memory consumption, processor utilisation, and end-to-end response times of time-triggered AUTOSAR designs on multi-core platforms. Our contributions are important because they enable deterministic time-triggered implementations to become competitive alternatives to their inherently non-deterministic event-triggered counterparts. We have prototyped a selection of optimisations in an industrial tool and evaluated them on realistic industrial automotive benchmarks