COMPUTER-GENERATED HOLOGRAM ETCHED IN GAAS FOR OPTICAL INTERCONNECTION OF VLSI CIRCUITS

By integrating, on a wafer plane, GaAs semiconductor optoelectronic modulators and detectors with computer-generated holograms between then, the potential for in-plane interconnections is proposed. We report the fabrication and characterisation of a binary-phase relief hologram etched in a GaAs wafer using an averaged Fresnel zone plate design to focus light to 2 x 2 spots for array interconnection. Efficiencies of 28% for this design of binary CGH etched in GaAs have been achieved, close to the theoretical maximum

Neurogenic hypothesis and psychiatric disorders

published_or_final_versio

Voluntary wheel running reverses the decrease in subventricular zone neurogenesis caused by corticosterone

Adult neurogenesis within the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus can be increased by voluntary exercise but is suppressed under stress, such as with corticosterone (CORT). However, the effects of exercise and corticosterone on the cell proliferation of the other traditional neurogenic site, the subventricular zone (SVZ) have been reported with controversial results. In addition, the co-treatment effects of voluntary exercise and corticosterone have not been investigated. This study aims to determine whether corticosterone can suppress cell proliferation in the SVZ, and whether this can be reversed by voluntary exercise. In the present study, the effect of chronic (4 weeks) corticosterone treatment and wheel running simultaneously on the SVZ cell proliferation of adult Sprague-Dawley rats was examined. The results showed that cell proliferation indicated by bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) was increased by voluntary wheel running whereas it was decreased by corticosterone treatment within the SVZ of the rats without running. For the rats with both corticosterone treatment and wheel running, it was found that the number of BrdU-labeled cells was approximately at the same level as the vehicle control group. Furthermore, these proliferating cells expressed doublecortin (DCX), a migrating neuroblast marker. Wheel running increased the percentage of BrdU-labeled cells expressing DCX in the SVZ whereas corticosterone treatment decreased this percentage. Thus, chronic injection of corticosterone can decrease the number of proliferating cells while wheel running can reverse the decrease in cell proliferation within the SVZ to normal levels. In addition, corticosterone can suppress the cell differentiation within the SVZ and this was alleviated by wheel running as indicated by the double-labeling of BrdU and DCX.published_or_final_versio

Collider Signatures of the N=3 Lee-Wick Standard Model

Inspired by the Lee-Wick higher-derivative approach to quantum field theory, Grinstein, O'Connell, and Wise have illustrated the utility of introducing into the Standard Model negative-norm states that cancel quadratic divergences in loop diagrams, thus posing a potential resolution of the hierarchy problem. Subsequent work has shown that consistency with electroweak precision parameters requires many of the partner states to be too massive to be detected at the LHC. We consider the phenomenology of a yet-higher derivative theory that exhibits three poles in its bare propagators (hence N=3), whose states alternate in norm. We examine the interference effects of W boson partners on LHC scattering cross sections, and find that the N=3 LWSM already makes verifiable predictions at 10 fb^(-1) of integrated luminosity.Comment: 15 pages, 4 PDF figures. Version accepted for publication by JHE

Lycium barbarum (wolfberry) polysaccharide facilitates ejaculatory behaviour in male rats

Poster Session AOBJECTIVE: Lycium barbarum (wolfberry) is a traditional Chinese medicine, which has been considered to have therapeutic effect on male infertility. However, there is a lack of studies support the claims. We thus investigated the effect of Lycium barbarum polysaccharide (LBP), a major component of wolfberry, on male rat copulatory behavior. METHOD: Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into two groups (n=8 for each group). The first group received oral feeding of LBP at dosage of 1mg/kg daily. The control group received vehicle (0.01M phosphate-buffered saline, served as control) feeding daily for 21 days. Copulatory tests were conducted at 7, 14 and 21 days after initiation of treatment. RESULTS: Compared to control animals, animals fed with 1mg/kg LBP showed improved copulatory behavior in terms of: 1. Higher copulatory efficiency (i.e. higher frequency to show intromission rather than mounting during the test), 2. higher ejaculation frequency and 3. Shorter ejaculation latency. The differences were found at all time points (Analyzed with two-tailed student’s t-test, p<0.05). There is no significant difference found between the two groups in terms of mount/intromission latency, which indicates no difference in time required for initiation of sexual activity. Additionally, no difference in mount frequency and intromission frequency was found. CONCLUSION: The present study provides scientific evidence for the traditional use of Lycium barbarum on male sexual behavior. The result provides basis for further study of wolfberry on sexual functioning and its use as an alternative treatment in reproductive medicine.postprintThe 30th Annual Meeting of the Australian Neuroscience Society, in conjunction with the 50th Anniversary Meeting of the Australian Physiological Society (ANS/AuPS 2010), Sydney, Australia, 31 January-3 February 2010. In Abstract Book of ANS/AuPS, 2010, p. 177, abstract no. POS-TUE-19

SemImput: Bridging Semantic Imputation with Deep Learning for Complex Human Activity Recognition

The recognition of activities of daily living (ADL) in smart environments is a well-known and an important research area, which presents the real-time state of humans in pervasive computing. The process of recognizing human activities generally involves deploying a set of obtrusive and unobtrusive sensors, pre-processing the raw data, and building classification models using machine learning (ML) algorithms. Integrating data from multiple sensors is a challenging task due to dynamic nature of data sources. This is further complicated due to semantic and syntactic differences in these data sources. These differences become even more complex if the data generated is imperfect, which ultimately has a direct impact on its usefulness in yielding an accurate classifier. In this study, we propose a semantic imputation framework to improve the quality of sensor data using ontology-based semantic similarity learning. This is achieved by identifying semantic correlations among sensor events through SPARQL queries, and by performing a time-series longitudinal imputation. Furthermore, we applied deep learning (DL) based artificial neural network (ANN) on public datasets to demonstrate the applicability and validity of the proposed approach. The results showed a higher accuracy with semantically imputed datasets using ANN. We also presented a detailed comparative analysis, comparing the results with the state-of-the-art from the literature. We found that our semantic imputed datasets improved the classification accuracy with 95.78% as a higher one thus proving the effectiveness and robustness of learned models

EL2 deep donor state in semi-insulating GaAs revealed by frequency dependent positron mobility measurements

Positron mobility measurements carried out on semi-insulating GaAs, using the Doppler shift in annihilation radiation technique, show a sharp transition from a high mobility value ∼120 cm2 V-1 s-1 to a lower value ∼45 V-1 s-1 just below room temperature. The temperature of the transition is found to be dependent on the frequency of the applied AC bias. We show that this effect is an artifact due to the thermal ionization of the EL2 deep donor state, which in its ionized state forms a positive space charge that causes the positron to experience large electric fields. This observation suggests a new positron annihilation-based deep-level transient technique applicable to semi-insulating materials. © 1994 The American Physical Society.published_or_final_versio

Pollutant dispersion in a developing valley cold-air pool

Pollutants are trapped and accumulate within cold-air pools, thereby affecting air quality. A numerical model is used to quantify the role of cold-air-pooling processes in the dispersion of air pollution in a developing cold-air pool within an alpine valley under decoupled stable conditions. Results indicate that the negatively buoyant downslope flows transport and mix pollutants into the valley to depths that depend on the temperature deficit of the flow and the ambient temperature structure inside the valley. Along the slopes, pollutants are generally entrained above the cold-air pool and detrained within the cold-air pool, largely above the ground-based inversion layer. The ability of the cold-air pool to dilute pollutants is quantified. The analysis shows that the downslope flows fill the valley with air from above, which is then largely trapped within the cold-air pool, and that dilution depends on where the pollutants are emitted with respect to the positions of the top of the ground-based inversion layer and cold-air pool, and on the slope wind speeds. Over the lower part of the slopes, the cold-air-pool-averaged concentrations are proportional to the slope wind speeds where the pollutants are emitted, and diminish as the cold-air pool deepens. Pollutants emitted within the ground-based inversion layer are largely trapped there. Pollutants emitted farther up the slopes detrain within the cold-air pool above the ground-based inversion layer, although some fraction, increasing with distance from the top of the slopes, penetrates into the ground-based inversion layer.Peer reviewe

An assessment of per capita water consumption in Sirte, Libya

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record .Worldwide, where freshwater resources are limited, a major water scarcity problem occurs. Population growth, which leads to increased water consumption with high inefficiencies of household water use behaviour especially in developing countries, makes the problem worse. In this situation, a sustainable urban water management approach which considers household water consumption patterns is required. However, country specific water consumption data particularly for the developing countries is limited. This paper investigates per capita water consumption in Sirte city by evaluating the indoor and outdoor domestic water uses using a survey. The survey contains information about demographic, socio-economic and household water end use behavioural characteristics. The preliminary results suggest that water consumption varies with the type of dwelling and females tends to consume considerable more water in comparison to males. Household income does not seem to affect water consumption.Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Liby

COVID-19 mortality in patients with cancer on chemotherapy or other anticancer treatments: a prospective cohort study

Background: Individuals with cancer, particularly those who are receiving systemic anticancer treatments, have been postulated to be at increased risk of mortality from COVID-19. This conjecture has considerable effect on the treatment of patients with cancer and data from large, multicentre studies to support this assumption are scarce because of the contingencies of the pandemic. We aimed to describe the clinical and demographic characteristics and COVID-19 outcomes in patients with cancer. / Methods: In this prospective observational study, all patients with active cancer and presenting to our network of cancer centres were eligible for enrolment into the UK Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project (UKCCMP). The UKCCMP is the first COVID-19 clinical registry that enables near real-time reports to frontline doctors about the effects of COVID-19 on patients with cancer. Eligible patients tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 on RT-PCR assay from a nose or throat swab. We excluded patients with a radiological or clinical diagnosis of COVID-19, without a positive RT-PCR test. The primary endpoint was all-cause mortality, or discharge from hospital, as assessed by the reporting sites during the patient hospital admission. / Findings: From March 18, to April 26, 2020, we analysed 800 patients with a diagnosis of cancer and symptomatic COVID-19. 412 (52%) patients had a mild COVID-19 disease course. 226 (28%) patients died and risk of death was significantly associated with advancing patient age (odds ratio 9·42 [95% CI 6·56–10·02]; p<0·0001), being male (1·67 [1·19–2·34]; p=0·003), and the presence of other comorbidities such as hypertension (1·95 [1·36–2·80]; p<0·001) and cardiovascular disease (2·32 [1·47–3·64]). 281 (35%) patients had received cytotoxic chemotherapy within 4 weeks before testing positive for COVID-19. After adjusting for age, gender, and comorbidities, chemotherapy in the past 4 weeks had no significant effect on mortality from COVID-19 disease, when compared with patients with cancer who had not received recent chemotherapy (1·18 [0·81–1·72]; p=0·380). We found no significant effect on mortality for patients with immunotherapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy, radiotherapy use within the past 4 weeks. / Interpretation: Mortality from COVID-19 in cancer patients appears to be principally driven by age, gender, and comorbidities. We are not able to identify evidence that cancer patients on cytotoxic chemotherapy or other anticancer treatment are at an increased risk of mortality from COVID-19 disease compared with those not on active treatment. / Funding: University of Birmingham, University of Oxford