Diffusion technique stabilizes resistor values

Reduction of the contact resistance stabilizes the values, over a broad temperature range, of resistors used in linear integrated circuits. This reduction is accomplished by p-plus diffusion under the alloyed aluminum contacts

Investigation of the potentialities of photochemical laser systems. Part I - Survey and analysis Final report, 1 Feb. 1966 - 31 Jan. 1967

Photodissociative laser systems used to convert solar radiation to monochromatic coherent emission - excitation mechanisms, spectroscopy of gases absorbing light, and chemical processe

Cardiovascular autonomic function and MCI in Parkinson's disease

Introduction: dysautonomic dysfunction and cognitive impairment represent the most disabling non-motor features of Parkinson's Disease (PD). Recent evidences suggest the association between Orthostatic Hypotension (OH) and PD-Dementia. However, little is known on the interactions between cardiovascular dysautonomia and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). We aimed to evaluate the association between cardiovascular dysautonomia and MCI in patients with PD. Methods: non-demented PD patients belonging to the PACOS cohort underwent a comprehensive instrumental neurovegetative assessment including the study of both parasympathetic and sympathetic function (30:15 ratio, Expiratory-Inspiratory ratio [E-I] and presence of Orthostatic Hypotension [OH]). Diagnosis of MCI was made according to the MDS criteria level II. Results: we enrolled 185 PD patients of whom 102 (55.1%) were men, mean age was 64.6 ± 9.7 years, mean disease duration of 5.6 ± 5.5 years with a mean UPDRS-ME score of 31.7 ± 10.9. MCI was diagnosed in 79 (42.7%) patients. OH was recorded in 52 (28.1%) patients, altered 30:15 ratio was recorded in 39 (24.1%) patients and an altered E-I ratio was found in 24 (19.1%) patients. Presence of MCI was associated with an altered 30:15 ratio (adjOR 2.83; 95%CI 1.25–6.40) but not with an altered E-I ratio, while OH was associated only with the amnestic MCI subgroup (OR 2.43; 95% CI 1.05–5.06). Conclusion: in our study sample, MCI was mainly associated with parasympathetic dysfunction in PD

Topological Quantum Phase Transitions in Topological Superconductors

In this paper we show that BF topological superconductors (insulators) exibit phase transitions between different topologically ordered phases characterized by different ground state degeneracy on manifold with non-trivial topology. These phase transitions are induced by the condensation (or lack of) of topological defects. We concentrate on the (2+1)-dimensional case where the BF model reduce to a mixed Chern-Simons term and we show that the superconducting phase has a ground state degeneracy $k$ and not $k^2$. When the symmetry is $U(1) \times U(1)$, namely when both gauge fields are compact, this model is not equivalent to the sum of two Chern-Simons term with opposite chirality, even if naively diagonalizable. This is due to the fact that U(1) symmetry requires an ultraviolet regularization that make the diagonalization impossible. This can be clearly seen using a lattice regularization, where the gauge fields become angular variables. Moreover we will show that the phase in which both gauge fields are compact is not allowed dynamically.Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Investigation of the potentialities of photochemical laser systems. Part 2 - Preliminary experimental studies Final report, 1 Feb. 1966 - 31 Jan. 1967

Potential of photodissociative laser system for converting solar radiation to monochromatic coherent emissio

Temperature Increase Dependence on Ultrasound Attenuation Coefficient in Innovative Tissue-mimicking Materials

Although high intensity focused ultrasound beams (HIFU) have found rapid agreement in clinical environment as a tool for non invasive surgical ablation and controlled destruction of cancer cells, some aspects related to the interaction of ultrasonic waves with tissues, such as the conversion of acoustic energy into heat, are not thoroughly understood. In this work, innovative tissue- mimicking materials (TMMs), based on Agar and zinc acetate, have been used to conduct investigations in order to determine a relation between the sample attenuation coefficient and its temperature increase measured in the focus region when exposed to an HIFU beam. An empirical relation has been deduced establishing useful basis for further processes of validations of numerical models to be adopted for customizing therapeutic treatments

Ranking deep web text collections for scalable information extraction

Information extraction (IE) systems discover structured in-formation from natural language text, to enable much richer querying and data mining than possible directly over the unstructured text. Unfortunately, IE is generally a com-putationally expensive process, and hence improving its ef-ficiency, so that it scales over large volumes of text, is of critical importance. State-of-the-art approaches for scaling the IE process focus on one text collection at a time. These approaches prioritize the extraction effort by learning key-word queries to identify the “useful ” documents for the IE task at hand, namely, those that lead to the extraction of structured “tuples. ” These approaches, however, do not at-tempt to predict which text collections are useful for the IE task—and hence merit further processing—and which ones will not contribute any useful output—and hence should be ignored altogether, for efficiency. In this paper, we focus on an especially valuable family of text sources, the so-called deep web collections, whose (remote) contents are only ac-cessible via querying. Specifically, we introduce and study techniques for ranking deep web collections for an IE task, to prioritize the extraction effort by focusing on collections with substantial numbers of useful documents for the task. We study both (adaptations of) state-of-the-art resource se-lection strategies for distributed information retrieval, and IE-specific approaches. Our extensive experimental eval-uation over realistic deep web collections, and for several different IE tasks, shows the merits and limitations of the alternative families of approaches, and provides a roadmap for addressing this critically important building block for efficient, scalable information extraction. 1

Hundred photon microwave ionization of Rydberg atoms in a static electric field

We present analytical and numerical results for the microwave excitation of nonhydrogenic atoms in a static electric field when up to 1000 photons are required to ionize an atom. For small microwave fields, dynamical localization in photon number leads to exponentially small ionization while above quantum delocalization border ionization goes in a diffusive way. For alkali atoms in a static field the ionization border is much lower than in hydrogen due to internal chaos.Comment: revtex, 4 pages, 5 figure

The novel mu-opioid antagonist, GSK1521498, reduces ethanol consumption in C57BL/6J mice.

RATIONALE Using the drinking-in-the-dark (DID) model, we compared the effects of a novel mu-opioid receptor antagonist, GSK1521498, with naltrexone, a licensed treatment of alcohol dependence, on ethanol consumption in mice. OBJECTIVE We test the ability of GSK1521498 to reduce alcohol consumption and compare its intrinsic efficacy to that of naltrexone by comparing the two drugs at doses matched for equivalent receptor occupancy. METHODS Thirty-six C57BL/6J mice were tested in a DID procedure. In 2-day cycles, animals experienced one baseline, injection-free session, and one test session when they received two injections, one of test drug and one placebo. All animals received GSK1521498 (0, 0.1, 1 and 3 mg/kg, i.p., 30 min pre-treatment) and naltrexone (0, 0.1, 1 and 3 mg/kg, s.c. 10 min pre-treatment) in a cross-over design. Receptor occupancies following the same doses were determined ex vivo in separate groups by autoradiography, using [3H]DAMGO. Binding in the region of interest was measured integrally by computer-assisted microdensitometry and corrected for non-specific binding. RESULTS Both GSK1521498 and naltrexone dose-dependently decreased ethanol consumption. When drug doses were matched for 70-75 % receptor occupancy, GSK1521498 3 mg/kg, i.p., caused a 2.5-fold greater reduction in alcohol consumption than naltrexone 0.1 mg/kg, s.c. Both GSK1521498 and naltrexone significantly reduced sucrose consumption at a dose of 1 mg/kg but not 0.1 mg/kg. In a test of conditioned taste aversion, GSK1521498 (3 mg/kg) reduced sucrose consumption 24 h following exposure to a conditioning injection. CONCLUSIONS Both opioid receptor antagonists reduced alcohol consumption but GK1521498 has higher intrinsic efficacy than naltrexone