Protective wrapping of off-the-shelf components

System designers using off-the-shelf components (OTSCs), whose internals they cannot change, often use add-on “wrappers” to adapt the OTSCs’ behaviour as required. In most cases, wrappers are used to change “functional” properties of the components they wrap. In this paper we discuss instead protective wrapping, the use of wrappers to improve the dependability – i.e., “non-functional” properties like availability, reliability, security, and/or safety – of a component and thus of a system. Wrappers can improve dependability by adding fault tolerance, e.g. graceful degradation, or error recovery mechanisms. We discuss the rational specification of such protective wrappers in view of system dependability requirements, and highlight some of the design trade-offs and uncertainties that affect system design with OTSCs and wrappers, and that differentiate it from other forms of fault-tolerant design

Teaching Livestock Producers to Use Handheld Computers

Mandatory animal ID is a well-discussed topic among livestock producers. A national ID program will probably require animal records to be maintained in electronic format. A 2-day intensive training was held to help cattle producers become proficient in using a handheld computer for animal record keeping. On an end-of-meeting evaluation, 99% of the participants felt a handheld computer would make record keeping tasks easier. A follow-up survey was mailed 1 year after the program generated a 70% response rate. After one year, only 57% of the participants felt that the handheld computer made their record-keeping task easier

The Repressors of mTORC1 Signaling, REDD1 and REDD2, Are Induced in Immobilized Rat Skeletal Muscle

Please view abstract in the attached PDF file

Rotational levels in quantum dots

Low energy spectra of isotropic quantum dots are calculated in the regime of low electron densities where Coulomb interaction causes strong correlations. The earlier developed pocket state method is generalized to allow for continuous rotations. Detailed predictions are made for dots of shallow confinements and small particle numbers, including the occurance of spin blockades in transport.Comment: RevTeX, 10 pages, 2 figure

Science on a Shoestring: Building Nursing Knowledge With Limited Funding

Building the science for nursing practice has never been more important. However, shrunken federal and state research budgets mean that investigators must find alternative sources of financial support and develop projects that are less costly to carry out. New investigators often build beginning programs of research with limited funding. This article provides an overview of some cost-effective research approaches and gives suggestions for finding other sources of funding. Examples of more cost-effective research approaches include adding complementary questions to existing funded research projects; conducting primary analysis of electronic patient records and social media content; conducting secondary analysis of data from completed studies; reviewing and synthesizing previously completed research; implementing community-based participatory research; participating in collaborative research efforts such as inter-campus team research, practice-based research networks (PBRNs), and involving undergraduate and doctoral students in research efforts. Instead of relying on funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other government agencies, nurse researchers may be able to find support for research from local sources such as businesses, organizations, or clinical agencies. Investigators will increasingly have to rely on these and other creative approaches to fund and implement their research programs if granting agency budgets do not significantly expand

Entanglement between static and flying qubits in a semiconducting carbon nanotube

Entanglement can be generated by two electrons in a spin-zero state on a semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube. The two electrons, one weakly bound in a shallow well in the conduction band, and the other injected into the conduction band, are coupled by the Coulomb interaction. Both transmission and entanglement are dependent on the well characteristics, which can be controlled by a local gate, and on the kinetic energy of the injected electron. Regimes with different degrees of electron correlation exhibit full or partial entanglement. In the latter case, the maximum entanglement can be estimated as a function of width and separation of a pair of singlet-triplet resonances.Comment: 17 pages and 12 figures, accepted to J. Phys. Cond. Ma

Case Histories of Settlement Performance Comparisons on Ground Improvement Using Soil Stiffness

Ground improvements often aim to reduce settlement risks for foundations and this requires reliable methods of prediction. Current approaches are based on empirical procedures and methods developed over 30 years ago. This has resulted historically in designs and installations of unnecessarily sophisticated foundations. In addition many developments now encountered by ground improvement contractors involve previously developed or ‘brownfield’ sites made up of heterogeneous and variable made ground. Methods to predict settlements traditionally use destructive and invasive approaches such as SPT or CPT that can be insensitive to time dependent changes, which often occur when brownfield sites are improved. By comparison geophysical methods are both non-invasive and non-destructive. One such technique that has demonstrated considerable promise is that of continuous surface wave determinations, which allows stiffness depth profiles to be obtained in a cost effective way. A recently developed method to determine settlements from these data has shown through four case studies presented in this paper to accurately predict settlements measured from zone tests. Thus offers a potentially more reliable way to predict settlement profiles than traditionally used methods