Review of System Design Frameworks

In the last decade, the enormous development of the semiconductor industry with ever-increasing complexities of digital embedded systems and strong market competition with fast time-to-market and low design cost demands have imposed serious difficulty to a conventional design method. Therefore, there emerges a new design flow named model-based system design, which is based on high-level abstraction models, heavy design automation, and extensive component reuse to increase productivity and satisfy the market pressure. This thesis presents reviews of ten high level academic system design frameworks and tools that have been proposed and implemented recently to support the model based design flow, namely System-on-Chip Environment (SCE), Embedded System Environment (ESE), Metropolis, Daedalus, SystemCoDesigner (SCD), xPilot, GAUT, No-Instruction-Set Computer (NISC), Formal System Design (ForSyDe), and Ptolemy II. These tools are then compared to each other in various aspects comprising objective, technique, implementation and capability. Following that, three design flow frameworks, including ESE, Daedalus, and SystemCoDesigner, are experimented for their real usage, performance and practicality. The frameworks and tools implementing the model-based design flow all show promising results. Modelling tools (ForSyDe, and Ptolemy II) can sufficiently capture a wide range of complicated modern systems, while high-level synthesis tools (xPilot, GAUT, and NISC) produce better design qualities in terms of area, power, and cost in comparison to traditional works. Study cases of design flow frameworks (SCE, ESE, Metropolis, Daedalus, and SCD) show the model-based method significantly reduces developing time as well as facilitates the system design process. However, most of these tools and frameworks are being incomplete, and still under the experimental stage. There still be a lot of works needed until the method can be put into practice

Application of Path-integral for Studying EXAFS Cumulants

In this work, the path-integral effective potential (PIEP) method has been applied to re-study the temperature dependence of extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) cumulants of materials. Using the trial density matrix and effective potential expression, we derived the analytical expressions of the first three EXAFS cumulants in the first shell of materials. The cumulant relation is also calculated to determine the temperature range in which the PIEP method could be applied. Our results are compared with available experimental data as well as with those calculated by the first-order perturbation approach in anharmonic Einstein model and the reasonable agreements are achieved

Investigation of the EXAFS Cumulants of Silicon and Germanium Semiconductors by Statistical Moment Method: Pressure Dependence

Pressure dependence of Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure (EXAFS) cumulants of silicon and germanium have been investigated using the statistical moment method (SMM). Analytical expressions of the first and second cumulants of silicon and germanium have been derived. The equations of states for silicon and germanium semiconductors have been also obtained using which the pressure dependence of lattice constants and volume of these semiconductors have been estimated. Numerical results using the developed theories for these semiconductors are found to be in good and reasonable agreement with those of the other theories and with experiment

Pressure Dependence of EXAFS Debye-Waller Factors in Crystals

In present article the pressure dependence of Debye-Waller factors in crystals has been investigated by using statistical moment method and anharmonic correlated Einstein model. These two methods provide similar results which indicate that the Debye-Waller factors of crystals decreases slightly under high pressure. Our numerical results for several crystals are compared to other theoretical and experimental values and showed a good agreement

SCREENING ANTIBACTERIAL ACTIVITY OF VIETNAMESE PLANT EXTRACTS AGAINST HUMAN PATHOGENIC BACTERIA

Objectives: Infectious diseases caused by bacteria are a leading cause of death worldwide. Hence, the objectives of the study are aimed to evaluate the antibacterial activity against five human pathogenic bacteria of methanolic extracts from 66 plants collected from Vietnam. Methods: The broth microdilution method was used to determine the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of methanol extracts of 66 plant species against five bacterial strains. Results: In this study, all the plant extracts were active against at least one train with MIC values ranging from 24 to 2048 μg/mL. Twenty-five plant extracts were active against all three Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, and Staphylococcus aureus). Of these, the extracts of Macaranga trichocarpa (Rchb. f. and Zoll.) Mull. Arg. (Euphorbiaceae), Calophyllum inophyllum L. (Clusiaceae) and Caryodaphnopsis baviensis (Lecomte) Airy Shaw (Lauraceae) exhibited the highest antibacterial activity (MIC =24–128 μg/mL), followed by extracts of Betula alnoides Buch.- Ham. e × . D. Don (Betulaceae), Acronychia pedunculata (L.) Miq. (Rutaceae), Croton alpinus A. Chev. ex Gagnep. (Euphorbiaceae) (MIC =64–256 μg/mL). Furthermore, the extract of Rhus chinensis Mill. (Anacardiaceae) and Annona reticulata L. (Annonaceae) exhibited potent antibacterial activity against the two Bacillus species (MIC =32–64 μg/mL). Conclusion: Results of this study reveal that plant extracts from Vietnam have highly antibacterial activity against Gram-positive bacteria. These results suggest that Vietnamese plant extracts may be a rich source of antibacterial drugs

Vertical transmission and early diagnosis of the microsporidian Enterocytozoon hepatonaei in Whiteleg Shrimp Penaeus vannamei

Microsporidia, which are ubiquitous obligate intracellular parasites responsible for a variety of diseases and economic losses in farming, have different transmission strategies. While horizontal transmission relies on sufûcient parasite numbers released into environment, vertical transmission requires host reproduction to occur leading to a lower virulence, and also induces a sex ratio distortion. The second strategy has been reported in a broad range of hosts from protists to mammals, in which insects and amphipod crustaceans as the most common. The present study shows the first evidence of vertical transmission of a microsporidia in decapod crustaceans via an experimental description of the infection by Enterocytozoon hepatopenaei (EHP) in whiteleg shrimp Penaeus vannamei. The group of healthy shrimp was infected with EHP by feeding with infected-shrimp tissue and sharing habitat. The presence of EHP in the infected shrimps was detected by using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method with specific primers EHP-510F/EHP-510R and histopathological analysis. The Nauplius, Zoae 1 and Zoae 2 stages collected from the infected female broodstocks demonstrated that EHP can infect offspring from their parental shrimp, and interestingly EHP can be detected from Nauplius stage of shrimp by the use of PCR method

Review of System Design Frameworks

In the last decade, the enormous development of the semiconductor industry with ever-increasing complexities of digital embedded systems and strong market competition with fast time-to-market and low design cost demands have imposed serious difficulty to a conventional design method. Therefore, there emerges a new design flow named model-based system design, which is based on high-level abstraction models, heavy design automation, and extensive component reuse to increase productivity and satisfy the market pressure. This thesis presents reviews of ten high level academic system design frameworks and tools that have been proposed and implemented recently to support the model based design flow, namely System-on-Chip Environment (SCE), Embedded System Environment (ESE), Metropolis, Daedalus, SystemCoDesigner (SCD), xPilot, GAUT, No-Instruction-Set Computer (NISC), Formal System Design (ForSyDe), and Ptolemy II. These tools are then compared to each other in various aspects comprising objective, technique, implementation and capability. Following that, three design flow frameworks, including ESE, Daedalus, and SystemCoDesigner, are experimented for their real usage, performance and practicality. The frameworks and tools implementing the model-based design flow all show promising results. Modelling tools (ForSyDe, and Ptolemy II) can sufficiently capture a wide range of complicated modern systems, while high-level synthesis tools (xPilot, GAUT, and NISC) produce better design qualities in terms of area, power, and cost in comparison to traditional works. Study cases of design flow frameworks (SCE, ESE, Metropolis, Daedalus, and SCD) show the model-based method significantly reduces developing time as well as facilitates the system design process. However, most of these tools and frameworks are being incomplete, and still under the experimental stage. There still be a lot of works needed until the method can be put into practice

High pressure melting curves of silver, gold and copper

In this work, based on the Lindemann's formula of melting and the pressure-dependent Grüneisen parameter, we have investigated the pressure effect on melting temperature of silver, gold and copper metals. The analytical expression of melting temperature as a function of volume compression has been derived. Our results are compared with available experimental data as well as with previous theoretical studies and the good and reasonable agreements are found. We also proposed the potential of this approach on predicting melting of copper at very high pressure

Determination of anticancer activity of several Vietnamese plant extracts by employing the in-vitro bioassay system

Determination of anticancer activity of several Vietnamese plant extracts by employing the in-vitro bioassay syste

A Novel Metamaterial MIMO Antenna with High Isolation for WLAN Applications

A compact 2×2 metamaterial-MIMO antenna for WLAN applications is presented in this paper. The MIMO antenna is designed by placing side by side two single metamaterial antennas which are constructed based on the modified composite right/left-handed (CRLH) model. By adding another left-handed inductor, the total left-handed inductor of the modified CRLH model is increased remarkably in comparison with that of conventional CRLH model. As a result, the proposed metamaterial antenna achieves 60% size reduction in comparison with the unloaded antenna. The MIMO antenna is electrically small (30 mm × 44 mm) with an edge-to-edge separation between two antennas of 0.06λ0 at 2.4 GHz. In order to reduce the mutual coupling of the antenna, a defected ground structure (DGS) is inserted to suppress the effect of surface current between elements of the proposed antenna. The final design of the MIMO antenna satisfies the return loss requirement of less than −10 dB in a bandwidth ranging from 2.38 GHz to 2.5 GHz, which entirely covers WLAN frequency band allocated from 2.4 GHz to 2.48 GHz. The antenna also shows a high isolation coefficient which is less than −35 dB over the operating frequency band. A good agreement between simulation and measurement is shown in this context