Quantum Dot in Z-shaped Graphene Nanoribbon

Stimulated by recent advances in isolating graphene, we discovered that quantum dot can be trapped in Z-shaped graphene nanoribbon junciton. The topological structure of the junction can confine electronic states completely. By varying junction length, we can alter the spatial confinement and the number of discrete levels within the junction. In addition, quantum dot can be realized regardless of substrate induced static disorder or irregular edges of the junction. This device can be used to easily design quantum dot devices. This platform can also be used to design zero-dimensional functional nanoscale electronic devices using graphene ribbons.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

An iterated greedy heuristic for no-wait flow shops with sequence dependent setup times, learning and forgetting effects

[EN] This paper addresses a sequence dependent setup times no-wait flowshop with learning and forgetting effects to minimize total flowtime. This problem is NP-hard and has never been considered before. A position-based learning and forgetting effects model is constructed. Processing times of operations change with the positions of corresponding jobs in a schedule. Objective increment properties are deduced and based on them three accelerated neighbourhood construction heuristics are presented. Because of the simplicity and excellent performance shown in flowshop scheduling problems, an iterated greedy heuristic is proposed. The proposed iterated greedy algorithm is compared with some existing algorithms for related problems on benchmark instances. Comprehensive computational and statistical tests show that the presented method obtains the best performance among the compared methods. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61572127, 61272377), the Collaborative Innovation Center of Wireless Communications Technology and the Key Natural Science Fund for Colleges and Universities in Jiangsu Province (No. 12KJA630001). Ruben Ruiz is partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness(MINECO), under the project "SCHEYARD - Optimization of Scheduling Problems in Container Yards" with reference DPI2015-65895-R.Li, X.; Yang, Z.; Ruiz García, R.; Chen, T.; Sui, S. (2018). An iterated greedy heuristic for no-wait flow shops with sequence dependent setup times, learning and forgetting effects. Information Sciences. 453:408-425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ins.2018.04.038S40842545

Multi-Queue Request Scheduling for Profit Maximization in IaaS Clouds

[EN] In cloud computing, service providers rent heterogeneous servers from cloud providers, i.e., Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), to meet requests of consumers. The heterogeneity of servers and impatience of consumers pose great challenges to service providers for profit maximization. In this article, we transform this problem into a multi-queue model where the optimal expected response time of each queue is theoretically analyzed. A multi-queue request scheduling algorithm framework is proposed to maximize the total profit of service providers, which consists of three components: request stream splitting, requests allocation, and server assignment. A request stream splitting algorithm is designed to split the arriving requests to minimize the response time in the multi-queue system. An allocation algorithm, which adopts a one-step improvement strategy, is developed to further optimize the response time of the requests. Furthermore, an algorithm is developed to determine the appropriate number of required servers of each queue. After statistically calibrating parameters and algorithm components over a comprehensive set of random instances, the proposed algorithms are compared with the state-of-the-art over both simulated and real-world instances. The results indicate that the proposed multi-queue request scheduling algorithm outperforms the other algorithms with acceptable computational time.This work was supported in part by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2017YFB1400800, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61872077 and 61832004, and in part by the Collaborative InnovationCenter of Wireless Communications Technology. The work of Quan Z. Sheng was supported in part by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship under Grant FT140101247 and in part by Discovery Project under Grant DP180102378. The work of Ruben Ruiz was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through the project OPTEP-Port Terminal Operations Optimization under Grant RTI2018-094940-B-I00 financed with FEDER fundsWang, S.; Li, X.; Sheng, QZ.; Ruiz García, R.; Zhang, J.; Beheshti, A. (2021). Multi-Queue Request Scheduling for Profit Maximization in IaaS Clouds. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. 32(11):2838-2851. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPDS.2021.3075254S28382851321

Non-Abelian Collective Excitations in Unlinearized Quark-Gluon Plasma Media

We study the effect of unlinearized medium on the collective excitations in quark-gluon plasma. We present two kinds of non-Abelian oscillation solutions which respectively correspond to weakly and strongly nonlinear coupling of field components in color space. We also show that the weakly nonlinear solution is similar to Abelian-like one but has the frequency shift, which is of order $g^2T$, from eigenfrequency.Comment: 7 page

Electronic Structure of Bilayer Graphene: A Real-space Green's Function Study

In this paper, a real-space analytical expression for the free Green's function (propagator) of bilayer graphene is derived based on the effective-mass approximation. Green's function displays highly spatial anisotropy with three-fold rotational symmetry. The calculated local density of states (LDOS) of a perfect bilayer graphene produces the main features of the observed scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) images of graphite at low bias voltage. Some predicted features of the LDOS can be verified by STM measurements. In addition, we also calculate the LDOS of bilayer graphene with vacancies by using the multiple-scattering theory (scatterings are localized around the vacancy of bilayer graphene). We observe that the interference patterns are determined mainly by the intrinsic properties of the propagator and the symmetry of the vacancies.Comment: 15 pages and 4 figure

Distribution of HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 Genes and Haplotypes in the Tujia Population Living in the Wufeng Region of Hubei Province, China

BACKGROUND: The distribution of HLA alleles and haplotypes varies widely between different ethnic populations and geographic areas. Before any genetic marker can be used in a disease-associated study it is therefore essential to investigate allelic frequencies and establish a genetic database. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: This is the first report of HLA typing in the Tujia group using the Luminex HLA-SSO method HLA-A, -B and -DRB1 allelic distributions were determined in 124 unrelated healthy Tujia individuals, and haplotypic frequencies and linkage disequilibrium parameters were estimated using the maximum-likelihood method. In total 10 alleles were detected at the HLA-A locus, 21 alleles at the HLA-B locus and 14 alleles at the HLA-DRB1 locus. The most frequently observed alleles in the HLA-I group were HLA-A*02 (35.48%), A*11 (28.23%), A*24 (15.73%); HLA-B*40 (25.00%), B*46 (16.13%), and B*15 (15.73%). Among HLA-DRB1 alleles, high frequencies of HLA-DRB1*09 (25.81%) were observed, followed by HLA-DRB1*15 (12.9%), and DRB1*12 (10.89%). The two-locus haplotypes at the highest frequency were A*02-B*46A (8.47%), followed by A*11-B*40 (7.66%), A*02-B*40 (8.87%), A*11-B*15 (6.45%), A*02-B*15 (6.05%), B*40-DRB1*09 (9.27%) and B*46-DRB1*09 (6.45%). The most common three-locus haplotypes found in the Tujia population were A*02-B*46-DRB1*09 (4.84%) and A*02-B*40-DRB1*09 (4.03%). Fourteen two-loci haplotypes had significant linkage disequilibrium. Construction of a neighbor-joining phylogenetic tree and principal component analysis using the allelic frequencies at HLA-A was performed to compare the Tujia group and twelve other previously reported populations. The Tujia population in the Wufeng of Hubei Province had the closest genetic relationship with the central Han population, and then to the Shui, the Miao, the southern Han and the northern Han ethnic groups. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results will become a valuable source of data for tracing population migration, planning clinical organ transplantation, carrying out HLA-linked disease-associated studies and forensic identification