EACOF: A Framework for Providing Energy Transparency to enable Energy-Aware Software Development

Making energy consumption data accessible to software developers is an essential step towards energy efficient software engineering. The presence of various different, bespoke and incompatible, methods of instrumentation to obtain energy readings is currently limiting the widespread use of energy data in software development. This paper presents EACOF, a modular Energy-Aware Computing Framework that provides a layer of abstraction between sources of energy data and the applications that exploit them. EACOF replaces platform specific instrumentation through two APIs - one accepts input to the framework while the other provides access to application software. This allows developers to profile their code for energy consumption in an easy and portable manner using simple API calls. We outline the design of our framework and provide details of the API functionality. In a use case, where we investigate the impact of data bit width on the energy consumption of various sorting algorithms, we demonstrate that the data obtained using EACOF provides interesting, sometimes counter-intuitive, insights. All the code is available online under an open source license. http://github.com/eaco

Does the food ingredient pectin provide a risk for patients allergic to non-specific lipid-transfer proteins?

Pectin, a dietary fiber, is a polysaccharide that is widely used in food industry as a gelling agent. In addition, prebiotic and beneficial immunomodulatory effects of pectin have been demonstrated, leading to increased importance as food supplement. However, as cases of anaphylactic reactions after consumption of pectin-supplemented foods have been reported, the present study aims to evaluate the allergy risk of pectin. This is of particular importance since most of the pectin used in the food industry is extracted from citrus or apple pomace. Both contain several allergens such as non-specific lipid transfer proteins (nsLTPs), known to induce severe allergic reactions, which could impair the use of pectins in nsLTP allergic patients. Therefore, the present study for the first time was performed to analyze residual nsLTP content in two commercial pectins using different detection methods. Results showed the analytical sensitivity was diminished by the pectin structure. Finally, spiking of pectin with allergenic peach nsLTP Pru p 3 led to the conclusion that the potential residual allergen content in both pectins is below the threshold to induce anaphylactic reactions in nsLTP-allergic patients. This data suggests that consumption of the investigated commercial pectin products provides no risk for inducing severe reactions in nsLTP-allergic patients

The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS): Ωm0\Omega_{\rm m_0} from the galaxy clustering ratio measured at z∼1z \sim 1

We use a sample of about 22,000 galaxies at $0.65<z<1.2$ from the VIPERS PDR-1 catalogue, to constrain the cosmological model through a measurement of the galaxy {\it clustering ratio} $\eta_{g,R}$. This statistic has favourable properties, being defined as the ratio of two quantities characterizing the smoothed density field in spheres of given radius $R$: the value of its correlation function on a multiple of this scale, $\xi(nR)$, and its variance $\sigma^2(R)$. For sufficiently large values of $R$, this is a universal number, capturing 2-point clustering information independently of the linear bias and linear redshift-space distortions of the specific galaxy tracers. In this paper we discuss in detail how to extend the application of $\eta_{g,R}$ to quasi-linear scales and how to control and remove observational selection effects which are typical of redshift surveys as VIPERS. We verify the accuracy and efficiency of these procedures using mock catalogues that match the survey selection process. These results evidence the robustness of $\eta_{g,R}$ to non-linearities and observational effects, which is related to its very definition as a ratio of quantities that are similarly affected. We measure $\Omega_{m,0}=0.270_{-0.025}^{+0.029}$. In addition to the great precision achieved on our estimation of $\Omega_m$ using VIPERS PDR-1, this result is remarkable because it appears to be in good agreement with a recent estimate $z\simeq 0.3$, obtained applying the same technique to the SDSS-LRG catalogue. It, therefore, suports the robustness of the present analysis. Moreover, the combination of these two measurements at $z\sim 0.3$ and $z\sim 0.9$ provides us with a very precise estimate $\Omega_{m,0}=0.274\pm0.017$ which highlights the great consistency between our estimation and other cosmological probes such as BAOs, CMB and Supernovae.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in A&A, references adde

The Intersection of Interfacial Forces and Electrochemical Reactions

We review recent developments in experimental techniques that simultaneously combine measurements of the interaction forces or energies between two extended surfaces immersed in electrolyte solutions—primarily aqueous—with simultaneous monitoring of their (electro)chemical reactions and controlling the electrochemical surface potential of at least one of the surfaces. Combination of these complementary techniques allows for simultaneous real time monitoring of angstrom level changes in surface thickness and roughness, surface–surface interaction energies, and charge and mass transferred via electrochemical reactions, dissolution, and adsorption, and/or charging of electric double layers. These techniques employ the surface forces apparatus (SFA) combined with various “electrochemical attachments” for in situ measurements of various physical and (electro)chemical properties (e.g., cyclic voltammetry), optical imaging, and electric potentials and currents generated naturally during an interaction, as well as when electric fields (potential differences) are applied between the surfaces and/or solution—in some cases allowing for the chemical reaction equation to be unambiguously determined. We discuss how the physical interactions between two different surfaces when brought close to each other (<10 nm) can affect their chemistry, and suggest further extensions of these techniques to biological systems and simultaneous in situ spectroscopic measurements for chemical analysis

Effect of Diverse Ligands on the Course of a Molecules-to-Solids Process and Properties of Its Intermediates

We have been studying chemical processes that use discrete molecular reagents to form extended solid inorganic materials. The goals of this program have been to determine how best to design and implement these molecular precursor reactions and to discover what chemical intermediates lie on the molecules-to-solids paths. In this manuscript we report studies of the reactions of the low-valent iron complex Fe(C8H8)2 with low-valent tellurium compounds of the form TePR3 (R = various hydrocarbon groups) that lead ultimately to the exclusively inorganic extended solid compounds FexTey. We have found four Fe/Te cluster types that are chemical intermediates in this process: Fe4Te4(PEt3)4, 1; Fe4Te4(PiPr3)4, 2; Fe6Te8(PMe3)6, 3; (dmpe)2FeTe2, 4; (depe)2FeTe2, 5; Fe4Te6(dmpe)4, 6. (Here iPr = CHMe2, dmpe = Me2PCH2CH2PMe2, and depe = Et2PCH2CH2PEt2.) The different clusters form when different supporting phosphine ligands are employed. We report the syntheses, structures, and properties of these intermediates and the comparisons and contrasts between these molecular intermediates and the extended solid products. We note that when larger ligands are used smaller clusters are formed. We also note what features of the molecular structures lead to ferromagnetic versus antiferromagnetic coupling of the distinct Fe centers. We have determined the structures of the following materials crystallographically: 2 (C36H84Fe4Te4P4; tetragonal, P421c; a = 14.0469(7) Å, c = 13.5418(9) Å; Z = 2); 3 (C18H54Fe6Te8P6; trigonal, R3; a = 11.859(2) Å, c = 26.994(5) Å; Z = 3); dmpe·2Te (C6H16Te2P2; monoclinic, P21/c; a = 6.0890(4) Å, b = 10.7934(7) Å, c = 9.8200(5) Å, β = 104.63(7)°; Z = 2); 5 (C20H48FeTe2P4; orthorhombic, Pbnn; a = 10.997(3) Å, b = 14.157(3) Å, c = 18.345(4) Å; Z = 4); 6 (C24H64Fe4Te6P8; orthorhombic, Abaa; a = 12.056(3) Å, b = 17.725(5) Å, c = 21.403(8) Å; Z = 4).