Ultra-low Power FinFET SRAM Cell with improved stability suitable for low power applications

In this paper, a new 11T SRAM cell using FinFET technology has been proposed, the basic component of the cell is the 6T SRAM cell with 4 NMOS access transistors to improve the stability and also makes it a dual port memory cell. The proposed cell uses a header scheme in which one extra PMOS transistor is used which is biased at different voltages to improve the read and write stability thus, helps in reducing the leakage power and active power. The cell shows improvement in RSNM (Read Static Noise Margin) with LP8T by 2.39x at sub-threshold voltage 2.68x with D6T SRAM cell, 5.5x with TG8T. The WSNM (Write Static Noise Margin) and HM (Hold Margin) of the SRAM cell at 0.9V is 306mV and 384mV. At sub-threshold operation also it shows improvement. The Leakage power reduced by 0.125x with LP8T, 0.022x with D6T SRAM cell, TG8T and SE8T. Also, impact of process variation on cell stability is discussed

Determinants of the Success of Active vs. Passive Investment Strategy

This study documents the monthly performance of active versus passive investing over the last 25 years. It also identifies several variables that are closely related to the current and next month’s success of one over the other. Three useful factors identified include the Fed funds rate, the VIX volatility index, and Russell Investments’ CrossVolTM index. All three are valuable in explaining and predicting the success of active management to certain extent

Rational design and validation of DNA fragments for gene assembly based on thermodynamics

Synthetic biology is a research field that involves the design and synthesis of genes and genomes. It has a wide range of applications in building gene circuits, activating biochemical pathways and metabolic engineering. Over the last decade, there has been rapid progress in developing efficient DNA synthesis technologies that improve the overall quality of the constructed DNA. Currently, there are several different methods available for successful DNA assembly of long genes. However, these methods have certain drawbacks such as presence of restriction sites (scars) within the assembled sequences or multi-step reaction process to assemble a high-number of fragments. Thus, new DNA assembly methods are applied in this work that overcome these challenges. This thesis discusses an overview of current advancements in synthetic biology with a focus on DNA assembly design tools, methods and applications. A computational tool is presented that helps in the rational design of DNA fragments based on thermodynamic analysis. The designed DNA fragments can be assembled using different techniques such as modified Gibson Assembly and no-erosion ligation based assembly method. The software predictions are validated for assembly of a high-number of DNA fragments using the two methods for a few genes. In addition, a collaborative bioinformatics project that reveals functional changes among scallop opsins after gene duplication events based on protein structure modeling is also part of this work

Rare And Unexplored Ethnozoological Practices of Tangkhul Naga Community of Manipur: A North Eastern State of India

Ethnozoology is an applied discipline that integrates both the basic and social sciences which observe the aspects of nature, socioeconomic, anthropological and historical aspects of the animal and human relationship exist in that community. Tangkhul Naga community of the Ukhrul district of Manipur have a rich heritage of using animal products in their folklore medicines for the treatment of various human ailments since time immemorial. The present study was carried out with an intention to find out various animal-based products uses in the traditional healing system among the Tangkhul Naga community of Manipur, India. A survey for the data collection was carried out for a period of one year through semi-structural questionnaires, interactions through oral conversations with local medicinal practitioners, old men and women. The study reveals that a total 21 different animal species and their products are used for the treatment of different human ailments. Of the total 21 numbers of animals, 9 belongs to the invertebrate groups and 12 to the vertebrate groups. Out of the 9 animals from the invertebrate group, 1 annelid, 7 arthropods and 1 mollusc comprise 4.76%, 33.3% and 4.67% fauna respectively while in the vertebrate group, 2 amphibians, 1 reptile, 3 Aves and 6 mammals contributed 9.5%, 4.76%, 14.28% and 28.57% fauna respectively. The finding shows that the ethnozoological practices of using animal derived medicines employed by Tangkhul community in Manipur plays an important part in the primary health care system of this community which are rare as well as undocumented till today. Proper documentation and sustainable exploration of such rare traditional information on ethno-zoological practices of the Tangkhul community of the Manipur will be helpful in the integration of the traditional knowledge system in the modern medicines and ultimately in the formation of strategies for sustainable exploration and conservation of such bio resources

Enhanced MO-PSO Preview Control of a Non-Linear Inverted Pendulum System

The use of advanced knowledge of reference can improve the tracking quality and performance of transient response of a control system and the systems using such information are called preview control systems. This paper explains the implementation of preview control methodology available in literature, i.e. DARE and LMI-based approaches for a non-linear system. The design of a multi-objective preview controller for a non-linear inverted pendulum system based on the MO-PSO (Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization) algorithm. The proposed algorithm uses a modified objective function to deal with multiple objectives and replaces infeasible solutions by feasible ones with the help of the concept of brood generation in the MBO (Marriage in Honey Bees) algorithm. The use of the notion of brood generation strengthens the algorithm by making the solutions not fall into local optima. The design methods are verified, for time response and robustness and stability parameters, on a benchmark nonlinear model of inverted pendulum. Simulations are carried out on a MATLAB platform. The test results verify the potential of the proposed MO-PSO procedure as per the quality of the solution obtained in terms of multiple objectives considered for the design problems