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Monel-sheathed MgB2 wires with 6, 18 and 54 filaments of diameter 0.83 mm manufactured by Sam Dong Co., Ltd, have been subjected to twisting, drawing and rolling and measurements at low temperatures. R(T), I–V characteristics, critical currents and stress/strain tolerances of these wires were analyzed. Low reduction of critical current (⩽10%) by twisting between 50 mm and 12.5 mm was observed, especially for the wire with 54 filaments, which also showed the best strain tolerance to tension, ∼0.43% at 4.2 K. The engineering current density of the 18-filament wire was decreased by 56% by drawing from 0.83 mm to 0.4 mm, but improved by ∼24% by rolling from 0.83 mm to 0.64 mm. A small uninsulated coil was made from wire flattened from 0.83 mm to 0.64 mm by the wind and react process, resulting in a very high winding packing factor of 0.91 and also a high winding current density of 104 A cm−2 at B ⩽ 5.6 T. The presented properties are interesting for possible applications of these MgB2 wires in DC windings.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a major global health problem, and healthcare workers (HCWs) are at high risk for HBV infection. Current guidelines strongly recommend immunization and screening for high-risk groups.We evaluated immunization and screening for HBV vaccination, assessed post-vaccination immune status of HCW's and characterized potential risk factors associated with poor immune response.From January 2010 to December 2018, we retrospectively analyzed comprehensive health checkup data for a total of 303 HCWs who received an HBV vaccination. After vaccination, HBV surface antibody (anti-HBs) titers were collected and the distribution of immune response types was determined. Risk factors for poor immune responses were identified using logistic regression.A total of 213 HCWs were analyzed after exclusion based on the exclusion criteria. In total, 28 (13.2%) HCWs had anti-HBs titers100 mIU/mL (hyporesponsive/nonresponsive groups), and 185 (86.8%) had anti-HBs titers ≥100 mIU/mL (hyperresponsive group). Follow-up observations found that 75% (21/28) of the hyporesponsive/nonresponsive groups did not have increased anti-HBs titers or did not maintain an increased response. A multivariate analysis showed that HBV antibody titers at the time of employment were a significant risk factor (OR, 6.12; CI, 1.34-27.93; P = 0.019).More attention should be paid to groups that are hyporesponsive/nonresponsive after vaccination and to those with low anti-HBs titers at the beginning of employment. HCWs can be further protected from HBV if their results are discussed at postvaccination follow-ups.

Key-value stores are widely used as storage backends, due to their simple, yet flexible interface for cache, storage, file system, and database systems. However, when used with high performance NVMe devices, their high compute requirements for data management often leave the device bandwidth under-utilized. This leads to a performance mismatch of what the device is capable of delivering and what it actually delivers, and the gains derived from high speed NVMe devices is nullified. In this paper, we introduce KV-SSD (Key-Value SSD) as a key technology in a holistic approach to overcome such performance imbalance. KV-SSD provides better scalability and performance by simplifying the software storage stack and consolidating redundancy, thereby lowering the overall CPU usage and releasing the memory to user applications. We evaluate the performance and scalability of KV-SSDs over state-of-the-art software alternatives built for traditional block SSDs. Our results show that, unlike traditional key-value systems, the overall performance ofKV-SSD scales linearly, and delivers 1.6 to 57x gains depending on the workload characteristics.

This paper presents YourSQL , a database system that accelerates data-intensive queries with the help of additional in-storage computing capabilities. YourSQL realizes very early filtering of data by offloading data scanning of a query to user-programmable solid-state drives. We implement our system on a recent branch of MariaDB (a variant of MySQL). In order to quantify the performance gains of YourSQL, we evaluate SQL queries with varying complexities. Our result shows that YourSQL reduces the execution time of the whole TPC-H queries by 3.6×, compared to a vanilla system. Moreover, the average speed-up of the five TPC-H queries with the largest performance gains reaches over 15×. Thanks to this significant reduction of execution time, we observe sizable energy savings. Our study demonstrates that the YourSQL approach, combining the power of early filtering with end-to-end datapath optimization, can accelerate large-scale analytic queries with lower energy consumption.

Background Fluoroquinolones are a popular alternative to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole for Stenotrophomonas maltophilia infections. Objectives To compare the effects of fluoroquinolones and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole on mortality of S. maltophilia infections. Data sources PubMed and EMBASE. Study eligibility criteria Clinical studies reporting mortality outcomes of S. maltophilia infections. Participants Patients with clinical infections caused by S. maltophilia. Interventions Fluoroquinolone monotherapy in comparison with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole monotherapy. Methods Systematic review with meta-analysis technique. Results Seven retrospective cohort and seven case–control studies were included. Three cohort studies were designed to compare the two drugs, whereas others had other purposes. A total of 663 patients were identified, 332 of which were treated with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (50.1%) and 331 with fluoroquinolones (49.9%). Three cohort studies were designed to compare the effect of the two drugs, whereas the others had other purposes. Levofloxacin was most frequently used among fluoroquinolones (187/331, 56.5%), followed by ciprofloxacin (114/331, 34.4%). The overall mortality rate was 29.6%. Using pooled ORs for the mortality of each study, fluoroquinolone treatment (OR 0.62, 95% CI 0.39–0.99) was associated with survival benefit over trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole treatment, with low heterogeneity (I2 = 18%). Specific fluoroquinolones such as ciprofloxacin (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.17–1.12) and levofloxacin (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.48–1.26) did not show a significant difference in comparison with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. In the sub-group analyses of adult and bacteraemic patients, significant differences in mortality were not observed between fluoroquinolones and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Conclusions Based on a meta-analysis of non-randomized studies, fluoroquinolones demonstrated comparable effects on mortality of S. maltophilia infection to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, supporting the use of fluoroquinolones in clinical S. maltophilia infections. Although the pooled analysis of overall studies favoured fluoroquinolones over trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, the studies included were observational, and sub-group analyses of certain fluoroquinolone agents did not show statistical differences with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Randomized clinical studies are needed to address these issues.

In a memory hierarchy, there are various classes of memory systems depending on the access latency. A typical memory hierarchy consists of a CPU cache, DRAM, and an SSD or HDD. The DRAM has an access latency of 100ns, while flash memory has a latency of about 50μs [1]. Recently, new non-volatile memories with latencies of less than 10μs, including PRAM, MRAM, and ReRAM [2], are getting attention for business-critical systems such as big-data analysis and storage caches. To meet the low latency requirements, a new type of NAND flash, Z-NAND, with a read time (t R ) of 3μs has also been introduced [3]. Figure 20.2.1 shows a feature comparison between Z-NAND and conventional 3D NAND [4,5]. The Z-NAND achieves a read time of 3μs, which is 15–20 times faster than conventional NAND. Write throughput reaches up to 160MB/s with a 100μs program time. To further minimize read latency, I/O circuit support a DDR interface for both x8 and x16 mode. To take full advantage of such low-latency memory devices, reduction of memory access overhead is necessary. In this paper, we introduce an NVMe SSD controller which leverages the advantages of the low-latency NAND and enables the reduction of total memory access time, thereby minimizing overall system latency.

Microstructural characterization and aging hardening behaviors of a new designed Ti-12.1Mo-1Fe alloy during solution treatment and aging were investigated in the present study. It is well known that when β-Ti alloys are generally under solution treatment or aging, α phases and ω phases appear or disappear dependent on heat treatment temperature and holding time. It is very necessary to understand the phase transformation phenomenon and to control the microstructure because these phases can control the drastic changes of the mechanical and physical properties of these alloys. According to the calculated [Mo]eq value and the microstructural observation, the β-transus temperature was about 780°. After the solution treatment, this alloy was composed of the β-phase and the microstructure mainly consisted of the equiaxed β grains with the average size of 25 μm. ω phases which were precipitated during aging process, played a more important role to the hardening effect than α phases. The highest hardness value of Ti-12.1Mo-1Fe alloy showed in the condition of the aging temperature of 450°. The hardening due to ω-phase precipitation can lead to a high hardness about 480 Hv but the coarse α-phase result in hardness below 300 Hv.

Combine harvester is one of the most needed agricultural machinery by farmers as it is increasingly difficult to find harvest worker. To develop the machine, Department of Agriculture and Biosystem Engineering collaborated with AGM Systems & Engineering to test the DSF75GT type combine harvester machine. The preliminary test shows that the machine performance is not optimal, especially when it is viewed from the grain damage percentage during the harvesting process. Based on the process, the harvesting principle of the machine includes the stages of cutting, feeding, threshing, and moving the grain from the threshing unit to the grain tank, and finally with unloading stage. Process to grain transfer with screw conveyor system is suspected to be the cause of grain damage. For this reason, this study aims to determine the machine parts which potentially contribute to the grain damage. The test was carried out in laboratory with two sample, i.e. harvested grain samples (GKP) and milled dry grain (GKG). The sample was inserted in to the threshing chamber which is then transferred by screw conveyor to the grain tank before being removed. Observation of the grain damage is carried out at 5 points on the screw conveyors. The results showed that there were 3 screws which contribute significantly to grain damage. From the result, the next step focuses on modification of the parts.

The objective of this study was to present the development of GPS-based tracking system to evaluate the effectiveness of tillage using a four-wheel tractor. The system is composed of a location acquisition, using GPS (iGPSport), and data analysis for estimating the tractor trajectories and effectiveness of tillage by measuring the overlap during the tillage. The laboratory stage experiment was conducted to validate the system by measuring the specified size of the field and tractor trajectories. The performance evaluation of the system was done by measuring the displacement error of actual trajectories and the estimated one. The system was also tested for the actual tillage operation using a four-wheel tractor, Daedong Kioti RX7210, in two locations in Yogyakarta: Pajangan, and Moyudan. The tractor tracking system was developed based on GPS for estimating the tractor trajectory path and operation width distance (l) after the operation as tillage effectiveness evaluation by the evaluation of overlap and untillage land systematically using the tracking system. The system performance evaluation in the actual field for tillage operation using the four-wheel tractor in Moyudan and Pajangan shows that the RMSE < 50 cm, and the MAPE < 24% with R2 > 0.7. Overall performance of the tracking system, it could be used to estimate the behavior of tillage operation.

This experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of feeding duration of diets containing corn distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) on productive performance, egg quality, and lutein and zeaxanthin concentrations of egg yolk in laying hens. A total of 300 57-week-old Hy-Line Brown laying hens were randomly assigned to one of 5 treatment groups (feeding duration) with 6 replicates consisting of 5 consecutive cages with 2 hens per cage. Diets were formulated to contain either 0% (the control diet) or 20% DDGS. Experimental diets were fed to hens for 12 wk. The feeding duration of diets containing 20% DDGS was 0, 3, 6, 9, or 12 wk before the conclusion of the experiment. Feeding the diet containing 20% DDGS for 3, 6, or 9 wk followed feeding the control diet for 9, 6, or 3 wk, respectively. The data for productive performance were summarized for 12 wk of the feeding trial. Results indicated that increasing feeding duration of diets containing 20% DDGS had no effects on productive performance of laying hens, but increased egg yolk color (linear, P

Buckwheat has been considered a functional health-improving pseudocereal grain throughout large areas of Eurasia, North America, South Africa, and Australia. Buckwheat is generally classified into common and Tartary buckwheat. Common buckwheat is self-incompatible while Tartary buckwheat is capable of self-pollination to some extent. In addition, the sprouts of Tartary buckwheat possess higher amounts of rutin, showing a strong antioxidant compound, than common buckwheat. Besides rutin, buckwheat contains plentiful quantities of functional metabolites for possible use in medicinal foods. The currently available buckwheat genomic information (proteome sequences), although incomplete, enables us to understand seed physiology, allowing improvements in the production and quality of buckwheat grains. In this review, we present previously published buckwheat proteomic studies, initially performed using gel-based and shotgun proteomic approaches. The challenges and perspectives of future buckwheat biochemical study will be addressed in light of the current advanced proteomic technologies.