Interrupt Mechanism Research Articles

Research and implementation of a large-bandwidth real-time radar jamming simulator.

The electromagnetic environment faced by modern radar is becoming increasingly complex. One effective means to improve the performance of radar systems is testing in an anti-jamming ability test chamber, where the increased complexity has also led to higher performance requirements for radar jamming simulators. Based on the requirements for modern radar system testing, this paper presents a study of a large-bandwidth real-time radar jamming simulator and describes its overall design architecture; the simulator covers the L-Ku and Ka frequency bands and the instantaneous bandwidth is ≥2GHz, which means that the system is able to simulate 11 interference patterns. Synchronous control of the system is realized in 1ms through use of the reflection memory interrupt mechanism, the synchronous pulse signal mechanism, synchronous timing design, and a real-time control software architecture. An overall design scheme for real-time simulation of a radar target jamming echo is given and baseband signal processing resources are saved through information preprocessing, a large-capacity high-speed storage board is designed to improve the data reading speed, a multiphase filtering structure is used to achieve high sampling rates and save hardware resources, and a high-speed parallel computing method is used to improve computing efficiency; the actual measured baseband signal processing time is less than 500ns. Finally, a measurement platform is built, and the main interference patterns are verified through experimental measurements.

Glycosylation of 2-(2-Propylsulfinyl)benzyl 1,2-Orthoester Glycosides Initiated by Sulfoxide Activation.

We have developed a highly effective glycosylation method that involves the activation of 2-(2-propylsulfinyl)benzyl 1,2-orthoester glycosides using triflic anhydride (Tf2O). Our research indicates that half of the glycosyl donor is activated through Tf2O via an interrupted Pummerer reaction mechanism, while the remaining portion is activated by triflic acid (TfOH) generated in situ. As a result, as little as 0.5 equiv of Tf2O is adequate for activating the orthoester glycoside donors. This glycosylation procedure offers several benefits, such as high efficiency, wide applicability, and the utilization of a recyclable leaving group.

Persistent Interruption in Parvalbumin-Positive Inhibitory Interneurons: Biophysical and Mathematical Mechanisms.

Persistent activity in excitatory pyramidal cells (PYRs) is a putative mechanism for maintaining memory traces during working memory. We have recently demonstrated persistent interruption of firing in fast-spiking parvalbumin-expressing interneurons (PV-INs), a phenomenon that could serve as a substrate for persistent activity in PYRs through disinhibition lasting hundreds of milliseconds. Here, we find that hippocampal CA1 PV-INs exhibit type 2 excitability, like striatal and neocortical PV-INs. Modeling and mathematical analysis showed that the slowly inactivating potassium current KV1 contributes to type 2 excitability, enables the multiple firing regimes observed experimentally in PV-INs, and provides a mechanism for robust persistent interruption of firing. Using a fast/slow separation of times scales approach with the KV1 inactivation variable as a bifurcation parameter shows that the initial inhibitory stimulus stops repetitive firing by moving the membrane potential trajectory onto a coexisting stable fixed point corresponding to a nonspiking quiescent state. As KV1 inactivation decays, the trajectory follows the branch of stable fixed points until it crosses a subcritical Hopf bifurcation (HB) and then spirals out into repetitive firing. In a model describing entorhinal cortical PV-INs without KV1, interruption of firing could be achieved by taking advantage of the bistability inherent in type 2 excitability based on a subcritical HB, but the interruption was not robust to noise. Persistent interruption of firing is therefore broadly applicable to PV-INs in different brain regions but is only made robust to noise in the presence of a slow variable, KV1 inactivation.

The genome and transcriptome of the snail Biomphalaria sudanica s.l.: immune gene diversification and highly polymorphic genomic regions in an important African vector of Schistosoma mansoni.

Control and elimination of schistosomiasis is an arduous task, with current strategies proving inadequate to break transmission. Exploration of genetic approaches to interrupt Schistosoma mansoni transmission, the causative agent for human intestinal schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa and South America, has led to genomic research of the snail vector hosts of the genus Biomphalaria. Few complete genomic resources exist, with African Biomphalaria species being particularly underrepresented despite this being where the majority of S. mansoni infections occur. Here we generate and annotate the first genome assembly of Biomphalaria sudanica sensu lato, a species responsible for S. mansoni transmission in lake and marsh habitats of the African Rift Valley. Supported by whole-genome diversity data among five inbred lines, we describe orthologs of immune-relevant gene regions in the South American vector B. glabrata and present a bioinformatic pipeline to identify candidate novel pathogen recognition receptors (PRRs). De novo genome and transcriptome assembly of inbred B. sudanica originating from the shoreline of Lake Victoria (Kisumu, Kenya) resulted in a haploid genome size of ~ 944.2Mb (6,728 fragments, N50 = 1.067Mb), comprising 23,598 genes (BUSCO = 93.6% complete). The B. sudanica genome contains orthologues to all described immune genes/regions tied to protection against S. mansoni in B. glabrata, including the polymorphic transmembrane clusters (PTC1 and PTC2), RADres, and other loci. The B. sudanica PTC2 candidate immune genomic region contained many PRR-like genes across a much wider genomic region than has been shown in B. glabrata, as well as a large inversion between species. High levels of intra-species nucleotide diversity were seen in PTC2, as well as in regions linked to PTC1 and RADres orthologues. Immune related and putative PRR gene families were significantly over-represented in the sub-set of B. sudanica genes determined as hyperdiverse, including high extracellular diversity in transmembrane genes, which could be under pathogen-mediated balancing selection. However, no overall expansion in immunity related genes was seen in African compared to South American lineages. The B. sudanica genome and analyses presented here will facilitate future research in vector immune defense mechanisms against pathogens. This genomic/transcriptomic resource provides necessary data for the future development of molecular snail vector control/surveillance tools, facilitating schistosome transmission interruption mechanisms in Africa.

Impact of Supply Chain Disruptions on Economic Growth: Insights From a Major Public Health Crisis.

Supply chain disruptions caused by major public health crises will severely impact the economic growth. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the above proposition, taking the strict lockdown policy and supply chain disruption in Hubei Province at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic as a case, to provide decision-making reference for the government in supply chain management under major public health crisis. To achieve this goal, this paper firstly measures the supply chain network of Hubei province via the multi-region and multi-sector value-added model; then empirically studies the impact of lockdown policy and supply chain disruption on provincial economic growth, with the monthly data of 31 provinces covering January 2018 to December 2022, by the Difference in Difference method. The results show that: the lockdown policy and supply chain disruption under the Covid-19 epidemic negatively affected provincial economic growth; moreover, supply chain disruptions make provinces closer to Hubei more vulnerable to economic shocks. The results are significant in the placebo test, and are further supported in the robustness test of alternative variables and data. We further discussed the Business Cycle Co-movement between Hubei and other provinces, and the probable impact mechanism of supply chain interruption on economic growth in the Covid-19 epidemic. This study shows that supply chain network plays an important role in the transmission of interregional economic shocks, as well as its importance for economic growth, especially in major public health crises.

Work interrupted at home: examining the influence of supportive teleworking practices on work–family conflict

PurposeBy utilizing boundary theory and distraction–conflict theory, this study attempted to examine the influential process of supportive teleworking practices granting work scheduling autonomy on work-to-family conflict (WFC) via the mediating mechanism of work interruption initiated from home.Design/methodology/approachThe study conducted two-wave online questionnaire survey to obtain a final sample of 277 remote knowledge workers in Taiwan during the peak period of COVID-19 pandemic. Hypotheses were tested with partial least squares-structural equation modelling using SmartPLS 3.0 software.FindingsThe results revealed that supportive teleworking practices did not directly decrease the level of WFC while home-sourced work interruptions fully mediated the negative relationship between supportive teleworking practices and WFC.Originality/valueThis provides a more nuanced explanation for how and why supportive teleworking practices are beneficial for employees to cope with the challenge of work–home interferences under the new ways of working. The findings simultaneously address evidence-based practices to better deal with mandatory teleworking during potential societal crisis beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mastering air combat game with deep reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning has been applied to air combat problems in recent years, and the idea of curriculum learning is often used for reinforcement learning, but traditional curriculum learning suffers from the problem of plasticity loss in neural networks. Plasticity loss is the difficulty of learning new knowledge after the network has converged. To this end, we propose a motivational curriculum learning distributed proximal policy optimization (MCLDPPO) algorithm, through which trained agents can significantly outperform the predictive game tree and mainstream reinforcement learning methods. The motivational curriculum learning is designed to help the agent gradually improve its combat ability by observing the agent’s unsatisfactory performance and providing appropriate rewards as a guide. Furthermore, a complete tactical maneuver is encapsulated based on the existing air combat knowledge, and through the flexible use of these maneuvers, some tactics beyond human knowledge can be realized. In addition, we designed an interruption mechanism for the agent to increase the frequency of decision-making when the agent faces an emergency. When the number of threats received by the agent changes, the current action is interrupted in order to reacquire observations and make decisions again. Using the interruption mechanism can significantly improve the performance of the agent. To simulate actual air combat better, we use digital twin technology to simulate real air battles and propose a parallel battlefield mechanism that can run multiple simulation environments simultaneously, effectively improving data throughput. The experimental results demonstrate that the agent can fully utilize the situational information to make reasonable decisions and provide tactical adaptation in the air combat, verifying the effectiveness of the algorithmic framework proposed in this paper.

Calibration of an elastoplastic model of sand liquefaction using the swarm intelligence with a multi-objective function

According to post-seismic observations, spectacular examples of engineering failures can be ascribed to the occurrence of sand liquefaction, where a sandy soil stratum could undergo a transient loss of shear strength and even behave as a “liquid”. Therefore, correct simulation of liquefaction response has become a challenging issue in geotechnical engineering field. In advanced elastoplastic models of sand liquefaction, certain fitting parameters have a remarkable effect on the computed results. However, the identification of these parameters, based on the experimental data, is usually intractable and sometimes follows a subjective trial-and-error procedure. For this, this paper presented a novel calibration methodology based on an optimization algorithm (particle swarm optimization (PSO)) for an advanced elastoplastic constitutive model. A multi-objective function was designed to adjust the global quality for both monotonic and cyclic triaxial simulations. To overcome computational problem probably appearing in simulation of the cyclic triaxial test, two interrupt mechanisms were designed to prevent the particles from wasting time in searching the unreasonable space of candidate solutions. The Dafalias model has been used as an example to demonstrate the main programme. With the calibrated parameters for the HN31 sand, the computed results were highly consistent with the laboratory experiments (including monotonic triaxial tests under different confining pressures and cyclic triaxial tests in two loading modes). Finally, an extension example is given for Ottawa sand F65, suggesting that the proposed platform is versatile and can be easily customized to meet different practical needs.

An asynchronous interrupt driven sampling technique for a practical monitoring system of power-line single-phase voltage and current signals

<span lang="EN-US">A practical monitoring system implementing an asynchronous interrupt driven sampling technique has been developed in this research. This system is intended to acquire power-line single-phase voltage and current signals as well as their related information such as RMS values and harmonic contents. The system uses a voltage transformer and a current transducer to acquire the signals of the voltage and current. A microcontroller is used in the system to perform acquisition processes, calculation, and wireless data transmission. The design activities include the development of hardware of the system and software in the microcontroller as well as monitoring software with Bluetooth technology that will run on portable devices. As part of the research, a new sampling technique was developed to provide constant and precise timings during the acquisition processes. In this technique, some peripherals related to the acquisition process were driven asynchronously using interrupt mechanisms. Some experimentation has been carried out, and the result showed that the system implementing this technique could successfully manage the timings for the synchronous acquisition sequences. Furthermore, the use of the Bluetooth interfaces in the system allowed practical monitoring process to be performed using portable devices.</span>

Molecular Mechanisms of Shigella Pathogenesis; Recent Advances.

Shigella species are the main cause of bacillary diarrhoea or shigellosis in humans. These organisms are the inhabitants of the human intestinal tract; however, they are one of the main concerns in public health in both developed and developing countries. In this study, we reviewed and summarised the previous studies and recent advances in molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis of Shigella Dysenteriae and non-Dysenteriae species. Regarding the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis and the presence of virulence factor encoding genes in Shigella strains, species of this bacteria are categorised into Dysenteriae and non-Dysenteriae clinical groups. Shigella species uses attachment, invasion, intracellular motility, toxin secretion and host cell interruption mechanisms, causing mild diarrhoea, haemorrhagic colitis and haemolytic uremic syndrome diseases in humans through the expression of effector delivery systems, protein effectors, toxins, host cell immune system evasion and iron uptake genes. The investigation of these genes and molecular mechanisms can help us to develop and design new methods to detect and differentiate these organisms in food and clinical samples and determine appropriate strategies to prevent and treat the intestinal and extraintestinal infections caused by these enteric pathogens.

IXIAM: ISA EXtension for Integrated Accelerator Management

During the last years, hardware accelerators have been gaining popularity thanks to their ability to achieve higher performance and efficiency than classic general-purpose solutions. They are fundamentally shaping the current generations of Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), which are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. However, despite their diffusion, a standard, general solution to manage them while providing speed and consistency has not yet been found. Common methodologies rely on OS mediation and a mix of user-space and kernel-space drivers, which can be inefficient, especially for fine-grained tasks. This paper addresses these sources of inefficiencies by proposing an <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ISA eXtension for Integrated Accelerator Management</i> (IXIAM), a cost-effective HW-SW framework to control a wide variety of accelerators in a standard way, and directly from the cores. The proposed instructions include reservation, work offloading, data transfer, and synchronization. They can be wrapped in a high-level software API or even integrated into a compiler. IXIAM features also a user-space interrupt mechanism to signal events directly to the user process. We implement it as a RISC-V extension in the gem5 simulator and demonstrate detailed support for complex accelerators, as well as the ability to specify sequences of memory transfers and computations directly from the ISA and with significantly lower overhead than driver-based schemes. IXIAM provides a performance advantage that is more evident for small and medium workloads, reaching around 90× in the best case. This way, we enlarge the set of workloads that would benefit from hardware acceleration.

Research on Mechanism of Work Interruption on Knowledge-sharing Behavior Based on Conservation of Resources Theory

Knowledge-sharing behavior has always been the focus of knowledge management. With the development of technology and the promotion of open offices, work interruption has gradually become the norm at work, and its impact on knowledge-sharing behavior is worth paying attention to. Based on the theory of resource conservation, situational experiments (study 1 and study 2) and a questionnaire survey (study 3) were conducted to explore the impact of work interruption on individual knowledge-sharing behavior. The results show that the work interruption damages the individual's psychological benefits, thus hindering the knowledge-sharing behavior, and the individual's agreeableness moderates this process. Combining work interruption and knowledge-sharing behavior, a new perspective for the study of knowledge-sharing behavior is provided to remind enterprises to pay attention to common work interruptions in practice.

A Forwarding Latency Optimization Method for Software Data Plane Based on Spin-Polling

Modern software data planes use spin-polling and batch processing mechanisms to significantly improve maximum throughput and forwarding latency. The user-level IO queue-based spin polling mechanism has a higher response speed than the traditional interrupt mechanism. The batch mechanism enables the software data plane to achieve higher throughput by amortizing the IO overhead over multiple packets. However, the software data plane under the spin-polling mechanism keeps running at full speed regardless of the input traffic rate, resulting in significant performance waste. At the same time, we find that the batch processing mechanism does not cope well with different input traffic, mainly reflected in the forwarding latency. The purpose of this paper is to optimize the forwarding latency by leveraging the wasted performance. We propose a forwarding latency optimization scheme for the software data plane based on the spin polling mechanism in this paper. First, we calculate the CPU utilization of the software data plane according to the number of cycles the CPU spends on the valuable task. Then, our scheme controls the Tx queues and dynamically adjusts the output batch size based on the CPU utilization to optimize the forwarding latency of the software data plane. Compared with the original software data plane, the evaluation result shows that the forwarding latency can be reduced by 3.56% to 45% (in a single queue evaluation) and 4.35% to 55.54% (in a multiple queue evaluation).

Work Interrupted at Home: Examining the Influence of Supportive Teleworking Practices on WFC

By utilizing boundary theory and distraction-conflict theory, this study attempted to examine the influential process of supportive teleworking practices granting work scheduling autonomy on work-to-family conflict via the mediating mechanism of work interruption initiated from home. The study conducted two-wave online questionnaire survey to obtain a final sample of 277 remote knowledge workers in Taiwan during the peak period of COVID-19 pandemic. Regression analysis was used to examine the proposed relationships. The results revealed that supportive teleworking practices did not directly decrease the level of work-to-family conflict while home-sourced work interruptions fully mediated the negative relationship between supportive teleworking practices and work-to-family conflict. This provides a more nuanced explanation for how and why supportive teleworking practices are beneficial for employees to cope with the challenge of work-home interference under the new ways of working. Our findings simultaneously address evidence-based practices to better deal with mandatory teleworking during potential societal crisis beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.

Finite element method based co-simulation platform for the numerical analysis of motor drive system

PurposeThis study aims to develop a finite element method based co-simulation platform for the numerical analysis of motor drive system. With the rising requirement of industry, the comprehensive design of motor drive systems has attracted increasing attentions. An accurate model, which considers the coupling between motor and its drive system, is vital for the analysis and design of motor drive system.Design/methodology/approachConsidering the coupling relationship between motor and its drive system, a flexible and extensible co-simulation platform of motor drive system is developed with the C++ language and finite element machine model to carry out the comprehensive analysis of motor drive system. The control system simulation program developed with C++ language adopts the same discrete form as the single-chip microcomputer and can simulate the interrupt mechanism, making the simulation closer to the actual control system. With the finite element analysis results of current step, the winding input voltage of next step is calculated by the executable program of control system and is fed into the finite element analysis, forming the two-way coupling analysis of drive system.FindingsPreliminary studies, such as calculation of machine core losses fed by inverters, and control parameters optimization, are conducted with this platform, which shows the flexibility and expansibility of this platform.Originality/valueThe power inverter circuit along with the controller is modeled using the C++ language, and embedded into the finite element machine model to achieve more realistic motor drive system simulation and complex functions.

Complementarity of Raman and Infrared spectroscopy for rapid characterization of fucoidan extracts

BackgroundFucoidans are sulfated polysaccharides from the cell-wall of brown algae. They have a wide range of applications in medicine, including regenerative medicine, ophthalmology, cancer, and autoimmune disease. Biological activity of fucoidans directly depends on their structure, which remains poorly understood. This is primarily because the polymeric nature of these molecules limits the use of nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry, classical tools of structural biology for their structural characterization. Raman and Infrared spectroscopies are non-invasive and non-destructive techniques that can be used to probe the structural organization of biological specimens. In this study, we investigate the potential of Raman and Infrared spectroscopy for structural analysis of several fucoidan extracts.ResultsOur results show that Infrared and Raman provide different but complimentary information about the structure of crude extracts of fucoidans, revealing the presence of minor impurities from co-extractants. We also found that at high extraction temperatures acidic conditions limit formation of melanoidins, while also yielding relatively high sulfate ester fucoidan. However, at high temperatures, water extraction may potentially result in formation of advanced glycation end products. Their presence could be problematic for fucoidan extracts intended for medicinal use, as advanced glycation end products have been linked to endocrine interruption mechanisms in vivo by crosslinking to and permanently altering extracellular matrix proteins.ConclusionRaman and Infrared can be used as complementary tools for rapid screening of crude fucoidan extracts, which can be a valuable tool for assessing impurities that remain after extraction.

Fatigue-Related Effects in the Process of Task Interruption on Working Memory.

Interruption generally has a negative effect on performance by affecting working memory (WM). However, the neural mechanism of interruption has yet to be understood clearly, and previous studies have largely ignored the role of fatigue state. To address these issues, the present study explores the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of interruption on WM performance using electroencephalography (EEG) data. The moderating effect of fatigue is also explored. The participants performed spatial 2-back tasks with math task interruption, suspension interruption, and non-interruption under different fatigue states. The results show that interruption led to increased alpha activity and P300 amplitude, indicating inhibitory control to interference from irrelevant information. Analysis of P200 amplitude revealed that interruption affected attentional reallocation when resuming the primary task. Increased theta power indicated an increased demand for information maintenance during the interruption. A speeding-up effect was discovered after interruption; however, fatigue impaired cognitive ability and further exacerbated the negative effects of interruption on WM and behavioral performance. These findings contribute to a better understanding of cognitive activity during the interruption and of the interaction with fatigue, and provide further support for the theory of memory for goals (MFG).

Revisiting reachability in Polynomial Interrupt Timed Automata

Polynomial Interrupt Timed Automata (PolITA) are finite automata with clocks organized along hierarchical levels. These clocks are equipped with an interruption mechanism, well suited to the modeling of real-time operating systems. Moreover, transitions between states contain polynomial guards and updates. The reachability problem in this class is known to be in 2EXPTIME with a decision procedure based on the cylindrical algebraic decomposition. We improve this complexity to EXPSPACE mainly using a combinatorial argument and we include a reduction leading to a PSPACE lower bound.

Catalytic Aldehyde and Alcohol Arylation Reactions Facilitated by a 1,5-Diaza-3,7-diphosphacyclooctane Ligand.

We report a catalytic method to access secondary alcohols by the coupling of aryl iodides. Either aldehydes or alcohols can be used as reaction partners, making the transformation reductive or redox-neutral, respectively. The reaction is mediated by a Ni catalyst and a 1,5-diaza-3,7-diphosphacyclooctane. This P2N2 ligand, which has previously been unrecognized in cross-coupling and related reactions, was found to avoid deleterious aryl halide reduction pathways that dominate with more traditional phosphines and NHCs. An interrupted carbonyl-Heck type mechanism is proposed to be operative, with a key 1,2-insertion step forging the new C-C bond and forming a nickel alkoxide that may be turned over by an alcohol reductant. The same catalyst was also found to enable synthesis of ketone products from either aldehydes or alcohols, demonstrating control over the oxidation state of both the starting materials and products.

Accelerate Monte Carlo Simulation for Probability Measures by an Interrupt Mechanism

Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) is useful for verifying analytical derivations and studying complex systems on an empirical basis. Although MCS is straightforward and does not require a priori knowledge of the sampled probability measures (PMs), it consumes a tremendous amount of computational resource and suffers from slow simulation procedures for sophisticated systems. To mitigate this drawback of MCS, we make full use of the monotone property and the logarithmic presentation convention of PMs in regard to power related metrics (PRMs) in communications science and propose an easy-to-implement interrupt mechanism to accelerate MCS for estimating PMs. To facilitate the programming on different platforms and provide a solid theoretical foundation, we present a generic implementation framework suited for estimating PMs with certain properties by MCS and analyze the underlying theory of the interrupt mechanism. In particular, we apply the de Moivre-Laplace theorem and analytic continuation to prove the asymptotic consistency under the indirect setup of MCS. We also design a hypothesis test for studying the proposed mechanism on a statistical basis.