Mixed-signal circuits and boards for high safety applications

A design methodology for analogue on-line test is presented by means of a real circuit implementation. The test strategy is based on monitoring via a very small analogue checker the inputs of all operational ampliers of a fully di erential circuit. The self-checking properties of the functional circuit are evaluated for a hard/soft fault model. Since the analogue checker outputs a double-rail error indication, the compatibility with digital checkers is ensured and the design of self-checking mixed-signal circuits becomes very simple. The mixed-signal approach is extended toboards through the IEEE Std. 1149.1 digital test bus and a layout rule to avoid interconnect di erential shorts.

Robotically Enhanced Advanced Manufacturing Concepts to Optimize Energy, Productivity, and Environmental Performance

In the first phase of the REML project, major assets were acquired for a manufacturing line for follow-on installation, capability studies and optimization. That activity has been documented in the DE-FC36-99ID13819 final report. In this the second phase of the REML project, most of the major assets have been installed in a manufacturing line arrangement featuring a green cell, a thermal treatment cell and a finishing cell. Most of the secondary and support assets have been acquired and installed. Assets have been integrated with a commercial, machine-tending gantry robot in the thermal treatment cell and with a low-mass, high-speed gantry robot in the finish cell. Capabilities for masterless gauging of product’s dimensional and form characteristics were advanced. Trial production runs across the entire REML line have been undertaken. Discrete event simulation modeling has aided in line balancing and reduction of flow time. Energy, productivity and cost, and environmental comparisons to baselines have been made. Energy The REML line in its current state of development has been measured to be about 22% (338,000 kVA-hrs) less energy intensive than the baseline conventional low volume line assuming equivalent annual production volume of approximately 51,000 races. The reduction in energy consumption is largely attributable to the energy reduction in the REML thermal treatment cell where the heating devices are energized on demand and are appropriately sized to the heating load of a near single piece flow line. If additional steps such as power factor correction and use of high-efficiency motors were implemented to further reduce energy consumption, it is estimated, but not yet demonstrated, that the REML line would be about 30% less energy intensive than the baseline conventional low volume line assuming equivalent annual production volume. Productivity The capital cost of an REML line would be roughly equivalent to the capital cost of a new conventional line. The unit raw material cost for REML (through-hardened bearing steel) is somewhat greater than raw material cost for the conventional line (case-hardened bearing steel). However, changeover time, tooling costs, gauging costs, utilities and energy costs, and manning of REML are less than the conventional line. Since REML supports near single piece flow, work in process inventory and work flow time are much less on the REML line than on the conventional line. REML allows the reduction in inventory of source steel tube sizes from several hundred to a few dozen. As a result, the business model indicates that the costs incurred on the manufacturing line are less with the REML line than with the conventional line for low manufacturing run volumes. Environment The REML line, when processing through-hardenable steel, requires far less hydrocarbon and other process gases than the conventional line when processing case hardenable steel. The REML line produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less liquid and solid waste materials. Broad Applicability The REML benefits will in general be extendible to the manufacture of non-bearing, heat treated and finished machined metal parts in the United States

A monograph of Aspergillus section Candidi

Aspergillus section Candidi encompasses white- or yellow-sporulating species mostly isolated from indoor and cave environments, food, feed, clinical material, soil and dung. Their identification is non-trivial due to largely uniform morphology. This study aims to re-evaluate the species boundaries in the section Candidi and present an overview of all existing species along with information on their ecology. For the analyses, we assembled a set of 113 strains with diverse origin. For the molecular analyses, we used DNA sequences of three house-keeping genes (benA, CaM and RPB2) and employed species delimitation methods based on a multispecies coalescent model. Classical phylogenetic methods and genealogical concordance phylogenetic species recognition (GCPSR) approaches were used for comparison. Phenotypic studies involved comparisons of macromorphology on four cultivation media, seven micromorphological characters and growth at temperatures ranging from 10 to 45 °C. Based on the integrative approach comprising four criteria (phylogenetic and phenotypic), all currently accepted species gained support, while two new species are proposed (A. magnus and A. tenebricus). In addition, we proposed the new name A. neotritici to replace an invalidly described A. tritici. The revised section Candidi now encompasses nine species, some of which manifest a high level of intraspecific genetic and/or phenotypic variability (e.g., A. subalbidus and A. campestris) while others are more uniform (e.g., A. candidus or A. pragensis). The growth rates on different media and at different temperatures, colony colours, production of soluble pigments, stipe dimensions and vesicle diameters contributed the most to the phenotypic species differentiation.Czech Ministry of Health, the Charles University Research Centre program no. 204069, Czech Academy of Sciences Long-term Research Development Project, the project of Charles University Grant Agency, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research in Japan, the Grant-in-aid for JSPS research fellow and the Future Leaders - African Independent Research fellowship programme.https://www.journals.elsevier.com/studies-in-mycologyam2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog

Highly efficient separation of actinides from lanthanides by a phenanthroline-derived bis-triazine ligand

The synthesis, lanthanide complexation, and solvent ex- traction of actinide(III) and lanthanide(III) radiotracers from nitric acid solutions by a phenanthroline-derived quadridentate bis-triazine ligand are described. The ligand separates Am(III) and Cm(III) from the lanthanides with remarkably high efficiency, high selectivity, and fast extraction kinetics compared to its 2,2'-bipyridine counterpart. Structures of the 1:2 bis-complexes of the ligand with Eu(III) and Yb(III) were elucidated by X-ray crystallography and force field calculations, respec-tively. The Eu(III) bis-complex is the first 1:2 bis-complex of a quadridentate bis-triazine ligand to be characterized by crystallography. The faster rates of extraction were verified by kinetics measurements using the rotating membrane cell technique in several diluents. The improved kinetics of metal ion extraction are related to the higher surface activity of the ligand at the phase interface. The improvement in the ligand's properties on replacing the bipyridine unit with a phenanthroline unit far exceeds what was anticipated based on ligand design alone

Taxonomy of Aspergillus series Versicolores : species reduction and lessons learned about intraspecific variability

Aspergillus series Versicolores members occur in a wide range of environments and substrates such as indoor environments, food, clinical materials, soil, caves, marine or hypersaline ecosystems. The taxonomy of the series has undergone numerous re-arrangements including a drastic reduction in the number of species and subsequent recovery to 17 species in the last decade. The identification to species level is however problematic or impossible in some isolates even using DNA sequencing or MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry indicating a problem in the definition of species boundaries. To revise the species limits, we assembled a large dataset of 518 strains. From these, a total of 213 strains were selected for the final analysis according to their calmodulin (CaM) genotype, substrate and geography. This set was used for phylogenetic analysis based on five loci (benA, CaM, RPB2, Mcm7, Tsr1). Apart from the classical phylogenetic methods, we used multispecies coalescence (MSC) model-based methods, including one multilocus method (STACEY) and five single-locus methods (GMYC, bGMYC, PTP, bPTP, ABGD). Almost all species delimitation methods suggested a broad species concept with only four species consistently supported. We also demonstrated that the currently applied concept of species is not sustainable as there are incongruences between single-gene phylogenies resulting in different species identifications when using different gene regions. Morphological and physiological data showed overall lack of good, taxonomically informative characters, which could be used for identification of such a large number of existing species. The characters expressed either low variability across species or significant intraspecific variability exceeding interspecific variability. Based on the above-mentioned results, we reduce series Versicolores to four species, namely A. versicolor, A. creber, A. sydowii and A. subversicolor, and the remaining species are synonymized with either A. versicolor or A. creber. The revised descriptions of the four accepted species are provided. They can all be identified by any of the five genes used in this study. Despite the large reduction in species number, identification based on phenotypic characters remains challenging, because the variation in phenotypic characters is high and overlapping among species, especially between A. versicolor and A. creber. Similar to the 17 narrowly defined species, the four broadly defined species do not have a specific ecology and are distributed worldwide. We expect that the application of comparable methodology with extensive sampling could lead to a similar reduction in the number of cryptic species in other extensively studied Aspergillus species complexes and other fungal genera.The project of Charles University Grant Agency, the project of Charles University Grant Agency, the Charles University Research Centre program, Czech Academy of Sciences Long-term Research Development Project, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research in Japan, the Grant-inaid for JSPS research fellows, the Future Leaders - African Independent Research fellowship programme funded by the UK Government’s Global Challenges Research Fund.https://www.journals.elsevier.com/studies-in-mycologyam2023BiochemistryGeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog