Generic Interface Research Articles

4-bit adhesion logic enables universal multicellular interface patterning

Multicellular systems, from bacterial biofilms to human organs, form interfaces (or boundaries) between different cell collectives to spatially organize versatile functions1,2. The evolution of sufficiently descriptive genetic toolkits probably triggered the explosion of complex multicellular life and patterning3,4. Synthetic biology aims to engineer multicellular systems for practical applications and to serve as a build-to-understand methodology for natural systems5–8. However, our ability to engineer multicellular interface patterns2,9 is still very limited, as synthetic cell–cell adhesion toolkits and suitable patterning algorithms are underdeveloped5,7,10–13. Here we introduce a synthetic cell–cell adhesin logic with swarming bacteria and establish the precise engineering, predictive modelling and algorithmic programming of multicellular interface patterns. We demonstrate interface generation through a swarming adhesion mechanism, quantitative control over interface geometry and adhesion-mediated analogues of developmental organizers and morphogen fields. Using tiling and four-colour-mapping concepts, we identify algorithms for creating universal target patterns. This synthetic 4-bit adhesion logic advances practical applications such as human-readable molecular diagnostics, spatial fluid control on biological surfaces and programmable self-growing materials5–8,14. Notably, a minimal set of just four adhesins represents 4 bits of information that suffice to program universal tessellation patterns, implying a low critical threshold for the evolution and engineering of complex multicellular systems3,5.

A Multicomponent Reactive Transport Model for Integrated Surface‐Subsurface Hydrology Problems

AbstractDespite the widespread use of integrated hydrology models in a variety of applications, consideration of multicomponent reactive transport is still not common. The implementation of these processes requires coupling transport at the surface‐subsurface interface and efficient solution of the non‐linear geochemical model that is consistent with the integrated hydrology solution. The Advanced Terrestrial Simulator provides a flexible multiphysics framework that facilitated this process. In this work, the integrated reactive transport process kernel (PK) was weakly coupled to the integrated hydrology PK. In turn, integrated transport and reactions were coupled using an operator splitting approach. This splitting enabled an explicit solution of the integrated transport problem, including a novel algorithm to calculate exchange fluxes across the surface‐subsurface interface and a point‐by‐point solution of the geochemical problem. Geochemical capabilities were added using well‐established external codes, but rather than using a custom interface to each, a generic interface was used that clearly specifies the variables and operations used by the chemistry PK. The implementation is demonstrated with two example simulations: transport of a tracer in a soil column as it saturates over time and water ponds on the surface and reactive transport in a hillslope driven by successive wet‐dry cycles that result in infiltration, runoff and exfiltration processes.

TID Effects in Highly Scaled Gate-All-Around Si Nanowire CMOS Transistors Irradiated to Ultrahigh Doses

Total-ionizing-dose (TID) effects are investigated in a highly-scaled gate-all-around (GAA) FET technology using Si nanowire channels with a diameter of 8 nm. n- and p-FETs are irradiated up to 300 Mrad(SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) and annealed at room temperature. TID effects are negligible up to 10 Mrad(SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ). At ultrahigh doses, the TID degradation depends on the irradiation bias condition, with more severe effects observed in longer channel devices. The worst case irradiation condition is when positive bias is applied to the gate. Threshold-voltage shifts are caused by H <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">+</sup> -driven generation of interface traps at the oxide/channel interface. In contrast, FETs irradiated under negative gate bias are dominated by transconductance loss and increases of low-frequency noise, suggesting the activation of border traps. Enhanced off-leakage current is observed in n-FETs due to charge trapping in shallow-trench isolation, and in p-FETs due to trap-assisted recombination at STI sidewalls and/or spacer dielectrics at drain/bulk junctions.

Evaluation of Hydrodynamic Performance of New Random Packing Structure Using CFD

This study demonstrates the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to evaluate the hydraulic properties of a new/complicated random packing structure, including flooding point, interfacial area, and liquid holdup. A standard Raschig ring and an extremely complex helical ring were employed as representative traditional and new structures. The combination of Green-Gauss node-based method with polyhedral meshing was presented to improve the hydraulic predictions. The CFD models were adopted to extend the liquid-to-gas ratio, L/G to the flooding points for hydraulic evaluation. The combination to calculate the gradient is essential for correctly evaluating the hydrodynamics of the complex helical ring. The predicted hydrodynamics for the helical ring were in good agreement with the experimental data. The helical ring has a wider operating range of L/G than the Raschig ring. Furthermore, we observed that the gas-liquid interface changed during the flooding and found that the inverted interfacial area was caused due to the flooding affecting the generation of the gas-liquid interface. The hydrodynamics of the Raschig ring and helical ring were compared based on CFD simulations; notably, the helical ring exhibited a wider range of L/G ratios and a better hydraulic performance. Finally, the flooding behaviors of the Raschig ring and the helical ring were investigated through volume fraction contours in CFD. We found that a part of the liquid was blown away, leading to the gas-liquid mixing area increasing at the flooding point. A severe flooding state can be investigated due to a large volume of liquid leaving the upper outlet which could be found when over the flooding point.

Interaction Design System for Artificial Intelligence User Interfaces Based on UML Extension Mechanisms

With the rapid development of computer network technology in recent years, more and more demands have been placed on the functionality and attributes of the user interface. In the development of many computer projects, the variability and flexibility of user interface requirements have greatly increased the complexity of program development for researchers. In addition, the poor reusability of page access control writing has created a pressing need for a highly standardized and flexible way of developing software. Thus, the development and design of user interfaces for application software systems occupy an important position and have been a hot topic of research in the field of human-computer interaction. The traditional methods of describing user interaction, such as state transitions and data flow diagrams, are not based on global and intuitive concepts. Moreover, there is little support for the design of user interface interaction behavior, resulting in user interfaces being ignored at design time and left to implementers to grasp at coding time. It is therefore an issue that needs to be addressed in order to integrate traditional methods and intuitive descriptions from the user’s perspective into a new interface development model and methodology. This research creates a user interface framework based on interaction behavior from the user’s perspective. Furthermore, UML extension mechanisms are used to enable the user interface framework to better support UML-based modelling environments. In addition, the UML is structured and extended to include structural elements that support interface generation, and a structured use case model is proposed, which drives the analysis and design of the individual submodels. The extracted abstract interface elements and their mapping to concrete interface elements are documented in a way that explores the generation of different target languages under different platforms. This study incorporates user requirements and provides a scientific reference for the development and design of user interfaces.

Solving Natural Conic Formulations with Hypatia.jl

Many convex optimization problems can be represented through conic extended formulations (EFs) using only the small number of standard cones recognized by advanced conic solvers such as MOSEK 9. However, EFs are often significantly larger and more complex than equivalent conic natural formulations (NFs) represented using the much broader class of exotic cones. We define an exotic cone as a proper cone for which we can implement easily computable logarithmically homogeneous self-concordant barrier oracles for either the cone or its dual cone. Our goal is to establish whether a generic conic interior point solver supporting NFs can outperform an advanced conic solver specialized for EFs across a variety of applied problems. We introduce Hypatia, a highly configurable open-source conic primal-dual interior point solver written in Julia and accessible through JuMP. Hypatia has a generic interface for exotic cones, some of which we define here. For seven applied problems, we introduce NFs using these cones and construct EFs that are necessarily larger and more complex. Our computational experiments demonstrate the advantages, especially in terms of solve time and memory usage, of solving the NFs with Hypatia compared with solving the EFs with either Hypatia or MOSEK 9.

BPLMSBT: Blockchain-Based Permission List for Mitigating the Sensor-Based Threats on Smartphones

In smartphones, sensors are fundamental components to sensing-enabled mobile activities and applications. Mobile applications and websites access the sensors and use them in a variety of ways. Permission is required to access permission-imposed sensors, while users can access no-permission imposed sensors directly without any permission by using the generic sensor application programming interface (API). An attacker targets these sensors and makes smartphones vulnerable at the application and network level. Attackers gain access to sensor information and use it for various purposes like identifying personal identification numbers (PINs) and stealing personal information. This paper presents BPLMSBT, a novel Blockchain-based permission list for mitigating smartphone sensor-based threats by allowing benign users to access sensors through various channels. The permission list contains benign sources with sensor access permissions, while the blacklist contains malicious sources that access the sensors. Blockchain avoids the risks of centralized lists and maintains the list’s integrity through the immutability feature. Experimental results indicate that the proposed defence mechanism consumes less overhead and is more efficient. An informal security analysis proved that the BPLMSBT is capable of protecting against various attacks.

An assistive interface protocol for communication between visually and hearing-speech impaired persons in internet platform

Purpose The article presents a design and development of a generic assistive system to establish an independent conversation-platform for hearing-speech impaired and visually impaired persons. Materials The developed software system is accomplished through programming using python and html. Methods Considering the constraints associated to the above mentioned impairments, the system implements both speech-to-text/gesture and text/gesture-to-speech conversion in its operation. In real-time hand-gesture to speech generation process is implemented using static image tracking, CNN based deep learning technique and MediaPipe hand-tracking solution. The software-prototype-terminals can be accessed through internet using MQTT protocol to accomplish the communicative conversation between visually impaired and hearing-speech impaired persons. Results The software system exhibits an average prediction time of less than approximately 1 s and 2 s for a four-letter based audio-word and a single hand-gesture, respectively, which are commensurate to the average time-complexity during human-to-human conversation. The average accuracy and loss for the hand-gestures through the CNN based deep learning are 0.9996 and 0.0008, respectively. The confusion matrix related to the prediction of alphabet-specific hand-gestures shows its satisfactory performance in gesture recognition. Conclusions The software-prototype of the generic assistive device shows its potential to establish an exclusive communication between a visually impaired and a hearing-speech impaired person through the internet. The same software-interface can also be used to accomplish a communicative conversation between either only visually-impaired persons or only hearing-speech impaired persons. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION The article presents a design and development of a generic assistive interface to establish an independent conversation-platform for hearing-speech impaired and visually impaired people via internet network. The same software-interface can also be used to accomplish a communicative conversation between either only visually-impaired persons or only hearing-speech impaired persons. The design can be further extended by incorporating multi-modal impairments to make a universal assistive device for all-in-one communication.

Autonomous runtime consumer interface generation and deployment for service interoperability

The new Industry 4.0 approach contributes to addressing evolving industrial requirements, which are continuously fueled by changing market demands. This situation leads to growing complexity and considerable increases in development and maintenance costs. A significant portion of engineering time is dedicated to the integration and interconnection of heterogeneous components. The solution for interoperability issues and the reduction in the associated engineering time are thus key tasks for increasing productivity and efficiency. Therefore, this paper provides an engineering approach to create interoperability among heterogeneous systems in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based environments by means of generating an autonomous consumer interface code at runtime.This paper aims to present a novel interoperability solution. The proposed approach makes use of service interface descriptions to dynamically instantiate a new autonomously generated interface that solves service mismatches between a provider and a consumer. This paper includes the definition of the consumer interface generator system, as well as the benefits and challenges associated with the autonomous generation and deployment of a consumer interface code at runtime. To illustrate the potential of this approach, a prototype of the system, which shows positive results, is implemented and tested.

Ionic Liquids Based on Chromotropic Acid: Excellent Lubricating Additives for Aqueous System

In this paper, four ionic liquids based on chromotropate (CAILs) were prepared and applied to heighten the tribological performance of aqueous system on different metal friction contacts. Taking for the potential choice for water-based lubricating additive, CAILs exhibited excellent water solubility and corrosion resistance. Tribological results showed that the CAILs, especially the phenolic hydroxyl group decorated samples (TsnN4444 and TsnP4444), demonstrating extremely effective lubricating properties with the efficient friction and wear descent (69% and 83% for Fe, 47% and 94% for Cu, 74% and 69% for Al, respectively). Especially, the excellent load-carrying capacity was also presented with the highest PB (833 N) and PD (1568 N) values for TsnP4444. It is speculated that the CAIL molecular adsorption on the interface and further generation of tribochemical films are beneficial for their lubricating effects, resulting from the systematic discussion and analysis of CA, QCM, SEM, XPS, and FIB-TEM tests. However, TsN4444 and TsP4444 showed less effective lubricating performances and poor load-carrying capacities due to tribocorrosion of hydroxyl groups at the interface.Graphical Abstract

DC response, low-frequency noise, and TID-induced mechanisms in 16-nm FinFETs for high-energy physics experiments

Total-ionizing-dose (TID) mechanisms are evaluated in 16 nm Si bulk FinFETs at doses up to 1 Grad(SiO2) for applications in high-energy physics experiments. The TID effects are evaluated through DC and low-frequency noise measurements by varying irradiation bias conditions, transistor channel lengths, and fin/finger layouts. The TID response of nFinFETs irradiated under positive gate bias at ultrahigh doses shows a rebound of threshold voltage with significant increase in the 1/f noise amplitude. The degradation is related to the generation of border and interface traps at the upper corners of STI oxides and at the gate oxide/channel interfaces. In contrast, pFinFETs have the worst degradation due to positive charge trapping in STI oxides, which severely degrades the device transconductance and total drain current, while negligible effects are visible in the threshold voltage and 1/f noise. The TID sensitivity depends strongly on the transistor layout. Short-channel devices have the best TID tolerance thanks to the influence of halo implantations, while pFinFETs designed with low number of fins have the worst degradation because of high densities of positive charge in the surrounding thick STI oxides. As a guideline for IC design, short-channel transistors with more than 4-fins may be preferred in order to facilitate circuit qualification.

Laboratory Hyperspectral Image Acquisition System Setup and Validation

Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) techniques have demonstrated potential to provide useful information in a broad set of applications in different domains, from precision agriculture to environmental science. A first step in the preparation of the algorithms to be employed outdoors starts at a laboratory level, capturing a high amount of samples to be analysed and processed in order to extract the necessary information about the spectral characteristics of the studied samples in the most precise way. In this article, a custom-made scanning system for hyperspectral image acquisition is described. Commercially available components have been carefully selected in order to be integrated into a flexible infrastructure able to obtain data from any Generic Interface for Cameras (GenICam) compliant devices using the gigabyte Ethernet interface. The entire setup has been tested using the Specim FX hyperspectral series (FX10 and FX17) and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) has been developed in order to control the individual components and visualise data. Morphological analysis, spectral response and optical aberration of these pushbroom-type hyperspectral cameras have been evaluated prior to the validation of the whole system with different plastic samples for which spectral signatures are extracted and compared with well-known spectral libraries.

Screening and Demulsification Mechanism of Fluorinated Demulsifier Based on Molecular Dynamics Simulation.

In order to solve the problem of demulsification difficulties in Liaohe Oilfield, 24 kinds of demulsifiers were screened by using the interface generation energy (IFE) module in the molecular dynamics simulation software Materials Studio to determine the ability of demulsifier molecules to reduce the total energy of the oil–water interface after entering the oil–water interface. Neural network analysis (NNA) and genetic function approximation (GFA) were used as technical means to predict the demulsification effect of the Liaohe crude oil demulsifier. The simulation results show that the SDJ9927 demulsifier with ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) values of 21 (EO) and 44 (PO) reduced the total energy and interfacial tension of the oil–water interface to the greatest extent, and the interfacial formation energy reached −640.48 Kcal/mol. NNA predicted that the water removal amount of the SDJ9927 demulsifier was 7.21 mL, with an overall error of less than 1.83. GFA predicted that the water removal amount of the SDJ9927 demulsifier was 7.41mL, with an overall error of less than 0.9. The predicted results are consistent with the experimental screening results. SDJ9927 had the highest water removal rate and the best demulsification effect. NNA and GFA had high correlation coefficients, and their R2s were 0.802 and 0.861, respectively. The higher R2 was, the more accurate the prediction accuracy was. Finally, the demulsification mechanism of the interfacial film breaking due to the collision of fluorinated polyether demulsifiers was studied. It was found that the carbon–fluorine chain had high surface activity and high stability, which could protect the carbon–carbon bond in the demulsifier molecules to ensure that there was no re-emulsion due to the stirring external force.

A gaze‐based interaction method for large‐scale and large‐space disaster scenes within mobile virtual reality

AbstractA three‐dimensional (3D) visualization of disaster scenes based on mobile virtual reality (VR) can improve the application scenarios and emergency service capabilities of traditional 3D visualization of disaster scenes. Because a smartphone needs to be placed into a mobile head‐mounted display, conventional touch scene interaction cannot be used by mobile VR, and the user's gaze usually serves as the default scene interaction method. However, the existing gaze‐based interaction methods for mobile VR scenes are passive scene interaction methods and cannot meet the basic interaction requirement for actively roaming through and exploring large‐scale and large‐space disaster scenes. Therefore, this study focuses on gaze‐based mobile VR interactions to satisfy the various interaction requirements of large‐scale and large‐space disaster scenes. First, a dynamic user interface (UI) generation method for gaze interaction in large‐scale and large‐space disaster scenes is proposed to solve the problem of the active exploration of mobile VR disaster scenes. Second, disaster scene exploration and disaster information query methods based on a dynamic UI and gaze are proposed. Finally, using a flood disaster as an example, a prototype system and associated experiments are discussed. As indicated by the experimental results, the gaze‐based mobile VR interaction methods addressed in this study can effectively support users in actively roaming through and exploring large‐scale and large‐space disaster scenes, disaster simulation analysis, and the interactive querying of disaster information within mobile VR, making the effective interaction of mobile VR disaster scenes possible.

A generic interface and a framework designed for industrial metrology integration for the Internet of Things

Industry 4.0 promotes the advance of several key areas in manufacturing. Industrial metrology, and associated activities such as Quality Assurance are receiving constant pressure to enhance integration, interoperability, and availability of measurement information to other operations. This promotes a trusted Internet of Things (IoT) or Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) environment where reliable measurement data is accurate and available to different stakeholders This work addresses the integration of measuring devices in an IoT architecture using open standards. It provides a framework, based on IEC 62264 for Quality Operations Management (QOM) and ISO 23952:2020 - Quality Information Framework (QIF) to describe the activities of Quality Assurance and Quality Control and provides a generic interface using OPC UA to receive and send information to the QOM activities, enabling the integration with upper systems such as an ERP and the creation of quality oriented Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). An experimental scenario in the steel manufacturing industry is provided, demonstrating, how the generic interface can support custom software applications by using metrology data to support, reducing product and process defects leading to Zero-Defect Manufacturing (ZDM).

Enhancement in nickel-silica interface generation by surfactant-assisted melt-infiltration: Surfactant selection and application in CO2 hydrogenation

Effective nickel-based catalysts used in CO2 methanation require high loadings (∼40 wt%) of nanoscale (∼10 nm) nickel particles. However, particle loading and size are inversely proportional. Surfactant-assisted melt-infiltration (SAMI) may alleviate this problem. In this study, various solid surfactants (Span60, SDBS, and CTAB) were homogeneously mixed with nickel nitrate and mesoporous silica support (SBA-15) under non-solvent conditions during melt-infiltration. The non-ionic surfactant (Span60) afforded a high loading (40 wt%) of nanoscale (11 nm) nickel particles and generated a large number of interfaces between the nickel particles and the support. These interfaces may contain oxygen vacancies that facilitate the adsorption–dissociation of CO2 on the catalyst surface. The Span60/40Ni/as-syn-SBA-15 catalyst exhibited the highest catalytic activity with CO2 conversion of 78 % and CH4 selectivity of 99 % at a temperature of 350 ℃ (Space Velocity: 120,000 mL/ gcat·h). The nanoscale size of the catalyst improved the catalytic performance by ensuring a simple and efficient reaction pathway. The SAMI method generates no liquid waste and may be commercialized to produce efficient catalysts.

NNLO interpolation grids for jet production at the LHC

Fast interpolation-grid frameworks facilitate an efficient and flexible evaluation of higher-order predictions for any choice of parton distribution functions or value of the strong coupling alpha _{mathrm {s}}. They constitute an essential tool for the extraction of parton distribution functions and Standard Model parameters, as well as studies of the dependence of cross sections on the renormalisation and factorisation scales. The APPLfast project provides a generic interface between the parton-level Monte Carlo generator and both the APPLgrid and the fastNLO libraries for the grid interpolation. The extension of the project to include hadron–hadron collider processes at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD is presented, together with an application for jet production at the LHC.

Microcontrollers Programming Framework based on a V-like Programming Language

This paper describes the design of a programming framework for microcontrollers specially the ones with low program and data memory, using as a base a programming language with modern features. The proposed programming framework is named Aixt Project and took inspiration from other similar projects such as Arduino, Micropython and TinyGo among others. The project’s name is inspired on the weasel pet of the V programming language and at the same time it is a tribute to Ticuna people who live in the Amazon rain-forest, just between Colombia, Peru´ and Brasil. Aixt comes from Aixt¨u or Ait¨u r¨u which means otter in Ticuna language. The proposed programming framework has three main components: the Aixt language based on the V syntax, a transpiler that turns the defined V-like source code into C, and a generic cross-platform Application Programming Interface (API). The target of this project is obtaining a cross-platform programming framework over the same language modern language an the same API, for programming different microcontrollers especially the ones with low memory resources. Aixt language is based on the syntax of V programming language but it uses mutable variables by default. V language was selected to be used as base of this project due to it is a new compiled programming language with interesting modern features. In order to turn the Aixt source code into C, a transpiler is implemented using Python and the some specialized libraries to design each part of its translation process. The transpiled code is compiled by the native C compiler of each microcontroller to obtain the final binary file, that is why the API has to be adapted for each native C compiler. The complete project is released as a free and open source project. Finally, different application test were done over the XC8 and XC16 compilers for the PIC16, PIC18, PIC24 and dsPIC33 microcontrollers families, demonstrating the correct working of the overall framework. Those tests show that the use modern language framework to program any microcontrollers is perfectly feasible using the proposed programming framework.

Service Interface Translation. An Interoperability Approach

Interoperability plays an important role in Industry 4.0. Interoperability in the engineering process allows the automation of the engineering phase, reducing the human effort involved and the associated engineering costs. It improves the quality of the engineering process and its overall efficiency. Nevertheless, the diversity of available standards, devices, and systems leads to great levels of heterogeneity and makes it difficult to achieve the aforementioned interoperability. As the lack of interoperability increases, a generic solution to the problem is increasingly demanded by the industry. This paper approaches the interoperability problem from a service interface perspective. A novel approach is presented to address service interface heterogeneity. The proposed solution is based on service interface translation, which is achieved via the generation of service interfaces. A new system, the consumer interface generator system, has been designed and implemented to generate interface instances to solve the interoperability mismatches between service consumers and providers at runtime. In this paper, the autonomous consumer interface generation process, the system architecture, and the generated interface instance are described. The proposed approach has been validated through practical experimentation, including the implementation of a system prototype and a testbed.

Combined effects of cycling endurance and total ionizing dose on floating gate memory cells

The combined effects of cycling endurance and radiation on floating gate memory cell are investigated in detail, and the obtained results are listed below. (i) The programmed flash cells with a prior appropriate number of program and easing cycling stress exhibit much smaller threshold voltage shift than without those in response to radiation, which is ascribed mainly to the recombination of trapped electrons (introduced by cycling stress) and trapped holes (introduced by irradiation) in the oxide surrounding the floating gate. (ii) The radiation induced transconductance degradation in prior cycled flash cell is more severe than those without cycling stress in the programmed state or erased state. (iii) Radiation is more likely to set up the interface generation in programmed state than in erased state. This paper will be useful in understanding the issues involved in cycling endurance and radiation effects as well as in designing radiation hardened floating gate memory cells.