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A Gaussian laser beam tightly focused through a high-numerical-aperture objective lens, so-called optical tweezers, is widely used for piconewton-range force spectroscopy. Utilizing a proper value for parameters such as bead size, numerical aperture of the objective, and power of the laser is always a challenge. Here, we show which set of values for the parameters can maximize lateral trapping efficiency. Our results show that for a high-numerical-aperture force spectroscopy, a bead with a diameter of 4–5 µm is suitable, and that for manipulation using large beads, utilizing a proper value for laser power and numerical aperture of the objective is crucial. We present a practical method for... 

Erasure codes are widely used in data storage systems to protect against disk failures. Employing erasure codes in an array of Solid-State Drives (SSDs) in storage systems necessitates designers to revisit different characteristics in comparison to Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), due to non-mechanical property of SSDs. One of the most important characteristics of SSDs is their limitation on the number of Program/Erase (P/E) cycles. By taking into account the characteristics of SSDs, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis to investigate the effects of three well-known erasure codes on the endurance and performance of SSD-based disk subsystems. The three erasure codes, i.e., Reed-Solomon,... 

The wear-out of flash-based Solid-State Drives (SSDs) is a main concern that significantly affects their reliability. One major parameter that accelerates SSD wear-out is the number of write-cycles committed to flash chips. The number of write-cycles in SSD-based disk subsystem is highly dependent on the erasure code implemented in Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAIDs). In this paper, we investigate the impact of erasure codes and the configuration of storage subsystems (i.e., the number of disks participated in the RAID array and stripe unit size) on the endurance of storage systems. The number of write-cycles is considered as a metric to evaluate the endurance of storage system. We... 

Erasure codes are applied in both HDD and SSD storage systems to improve the reliability. The design of erasure codes for SSD-based systems should be performed with respect to a specific feature of SSDs, i.e., endurance. Endurance is defined as the number of Program/Erase (P/E)-cycles that one SSD can endure for reliable operation. The common metric for comparing the endurance of two systems is the number of P/E-cycles, which is yielded by time-consuming simulations. This paper proposes two new metrics called DPD-factor and GDP-pattern, for comparing the effect of erasure codes on the endurance of systems based on their encoding designs, without simulation. With respect to the endurance,... 

A Gaussian laser beam tightly focused through a high-numerical-aperture objective lens, so-called optical tweezers, is widely used for piconewton-range force spectroscopy. Utilizing a proper value for parameters such as bead size, numerical aperture of the objective, and power of the laser is always a challenge. Here, we show which set of values for the parameters can maximize lateral trapping efficiency. Our results show that for a high-numerical-aperture force spectroscopy, a bead with a diameter of 4–5 µm is suitable, and that for manipulation using large beads, utilizing a proper value for laser power and numerical aperture of the objective is crucial. We present a practical method for... 

Abstract: A metal-free method for activation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is introduced using piperidinium trifluoroacetate (PPHTFA) ionic liquid as catalyst. The catalyst has been used for selective oxidation of thioanisole to its corresponding sulfoxide at room temperature. It was found that the selectivities were reduced by increasing the reaction temperature. In this work, no organic solvents or metallic salts were used for activation of H2O2. Mechanistic studies suggested that the reaction proceeds via in situ formation of trifluoro hydroperoxy species as an active catalytic intermediate. Formation of the catalytic intermediate was screened by NMR, IR and Mass Spectroscopy analysis.... 

Optical tweezers are indispensable force spectroscopes. The trap stiffness and the linear force range of the instrument determine the working force range of the instrument. Here we show both theoretically and experimentallythat utilizing a circular obstruction at the back focal plane of the objective can significantly increase the maximumlinear force. For instance, utilizing a disk with an obstruction ratio of 0.773 could increase the maximum linearforce by a factor of ∼39 when a 3.4 μm polystyrene bead is trapped. We also show that this simple beam shapingmethod can significantly improve the maximum applicable force per unit power of the laser entering the objectivelens. © 2018 Optical... 

International Data Company (IDC) has estimated the total amount of digital data stored in the world will reach 40 thousand Exabytes at the end of 2020. The idea of accessing this volume of data, anywhere at any time by exploiting commodity hardware, led to the introduction of cloud storage. The abounded rate and variety of failures in the equipment used in cloud storage systems, placed fault tolerance, at top of the challenges in these systems. Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) has provided cloud with reliable storage via replication. Storage overhead of replication is high and therefore it's going to be replaced with erasure codes. Despite the significant number of researches on... 

The use of Solid State Drives (SSDs) has been increased in storage systems due to high performance and low power consumption. However, some inherent properties of SSDs result in different behavior for SSDs in comparison with Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). As an inherent property, the Bit Error Rate (BER) of SSDs increases, when the number of Program/Erase (P/E) cycles arises. This increment leads to two effects in an array of SSDs during its operation: (1) different BER on different SSDs of the system (SSD-variant BER), and (2) different BER in different time moments (time-variant BER). With respect to these two effects, the reliability evaluation of SSD-based RAIDs would be different from... 

We propose a nonlinear method for the analysis of the time series for the spatial position of a bead trapped in optical tweezers, which enables us to reconstruct its dynamical equation of motion. The main advantage of the method is that all the functions and parameters of the dynamics are determined directly (non-parametrically) from the measured series. It also allows us to determine, for the first time to our knowledge, the spatial-dependence of the diffusion coefficient of a bead in an optical trap, and to demonstrate that it is not in general constant. This is in contrast with the main assumption of the popularly-used power spectrum calibration method. The proposed method is validated... 

Optical tweezers are proven and indispensable micro-manipulation tools. It is very common to use an immersion-assisted high NA objective for optical trapping of micrometer-sized beads. However, such objectives suffer from low working depth range. Here we show, both by theory and experiment, that a dry objective can be utilized for optimal trapping of even sub-micrometer objects. For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we were able to stably trap polystyrene beads with radii of 270 and 175 nm in 3D using an objective with numerical aperture of 0.9. © 2022 Optica Publishing Group  

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) biocompatible systems can host enzymes/bacteria/viruses. Herein we synthesized a series of fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH)-decorated UiO-66-NH2 based on Citrus tangerine leaf extract for drug delivery and biosensor applications. Five chemically manipulated FAAH-like benzamides were localized on the UiO-66-NH2 surface with physical interactions. Comprehensive cellular and molecular analyses were conducted on HEK-293, HeLa, HepG2, PC12, MCF-7, and HT-29 cell lines (cytotoxicity assessment after 24 and 48 h). MTT results proved above 95 and 50% relative cell viability in the absence and presence of the drug, respectively. A complete targeted drug-releasing... 

Four 5-, 10-, 20- and 30-story moment frames, representing low-, mid-, and two high-rise structures, were subjected to a great number of idealized directivity pulses. The amplitudes and periods of pulses vary from 0.02 g to 1.0 g and 0.5 to 12 sec, respectively. Over 1400 nonlinear dynamic analyses of low- to high-rise moment frames were performed which were feasible through using modified fish-bone model. The distribution of interstory drift along the height was studied and two applied contours were proposed: (i) the maximum interstory drift contour, and (ii) the critical story contour. These contours were demonstrated versus the ratio of natural period of the structure to the pulse period... 

In this article singular points of a parallel manipulator are obtained based on a novel geometrical method. Here we introduce the constrained plain method (CPM) and some of its application in parallel mechanism. Given the definition of constraint plane (CP) and infinite constraint plane (ICP) the dependency conditions of constraints is achieved with the use of a new theorem based on the Ceva geometrical theorem. The direction of angular velocity of a body is achieved by having three ICPs with the use of another theorem. Finally, with the use of the above two novel theorems singularities of the 3UPF_PU mechanism are obtained. It should be emphasized that this method is completely geometrical,... 

An analytical model is proposed to study the effect of particle size on melting enthalpy and entropy of metallic nanoparticles (NPs). The Mott's and Regel's equations for melting entropy in the combination of core average coordination number (CAC) and surface average coordination number (SAC) of freestanding NPs are considered. Clusters of icosahedral (IC), body centered cubic (BCC), and body centered tetragonal (BCT) structure without any vacancies and defects are modeled. Using the variable coordination number made this model to be in good agreement with experimental and molecular dynamic (MD) results of different crystal structures. The model predicts melting entropy and enthalpy of... 

Grinding is widely used for manufacturing of components that require fine surface finish and good dimensional accuracy. In this study a thermo-mechanical finite element analysis is conducted to find out how grinding parameters can affect temperature and residual stress distribution in the workpiece. Results of parametric study presented in this work indicate, by carefully selecting the grinding parameters, minimum thermal and mechanical damage can be achieved. Higher workpiece velocities produce higher surface residual stress. By increasing depths of cut, depth of tensile residual stresses increases. Convection heat coefficient does not have any considerable effect on surface residual stress... 

Adaptive Noise Cancellation (ANC) is a well-known technique for background noise reduction in automobile and vehicular environments. The noise fields in automobile and other vehicle interior obey the diffuse noise field model closely. On the other hand, the ANC does not provide sufficient noise reduction in the diffuse noise fields. In this paper, a new multistage post-filter is designed for ANC as a solution to diffuse noise conditions. The designed post-filter is a single channel Linear Prediction (LP) based speech enhancement system. The LP is performed by an adaptive lattice filter and attempts to extract speech components by using intermediate ANC signals. The post-filter has no...