This paper presents an analytical expression of the pressure barrier in a capillary-burst valve for flow regulation in centrifugal microfluidics. The analysis considers variations of the interfacial energies at the meniscus of three-dimensional (3D) configuration in a rectangular microchannel with a sudden expansion in cross-section. We derive a simple expression that predicts the critical burst pressure or rotational speed to overcome the capillary valve. Experiments were carried out for capillary valves that were integrated with microchannels on a rotating disk having various cross-sectional dimensions (300 and 400 mu m in width and 80-600 mu m in depth) and wedge angles (30 degrees-100 degrees) of sudden expansion. The flow visualization of the meniscus development across the capillary valve supports the assumptions made for the present analysis. The measurements of burst rotational speeds for the capillary valves are in good agreement with the predictions by the simple expression except that those with a larger channel width and wider wedge angles are nearly 10% lower than the predicted values

Recently, storage systems have observed a great leap in performance, reliability, endurance, and cost, due to the advance in nonvolatile memory technologies, such as NAND flash memory. However, although delivering better performance, shock resistance, and energy efficiency than mechanical hard disks, NAND flash memory comes with unique characteristics and operational constraints, and cannot be directly used as an ideal block device. In particular, to address the notorious writeonce property, garbage collection is necessary to clean the outdated data on flash memory. However, garbage collection is very time-consuming and often becomes the performance bottleneck of flash memory. Moreover, because flash memory cells endure very limited writes (as compared to mechanical hard disks) before they are worn out, the wear-leveling design is also indispensable to equalize the use of flash memory space and to prolong the flash memory lifetime. In response, this paper surveys state-of-the-art garbage collection and wear-leveling designs, so as to assist the design of flash memory management in various application scenarios. The future development trends of flash memory, such as the widespread adoption of higher-level flash memory and the emerging of three-dimensional (3D) flash memory architectures, are also discussed.

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Genetic signaling and redox homeostasis are required for proper growth of blood vessels. Here, we report a novel function of peroxiredoxin1 (Prdx1) in vascular development in zebrafish. Knockdown of prdx1 impairs the growth of intersegmental vessel and caudal vein plexus (CVP), and reduces the expression of vascular markers, thus suggesting a role for prdx1 in vasculature and indicating that the antioxidant function of prdx1 is important. We found that H O -treated embryos also have CVP defects and observed synergistic effects when prdx1 knockdown was combined with H O treatment. Moreover, N-acetyl-cysteine treatment rescues the vascular defects in prdx1 morphants. These results suggest that oxidative stress disturbs vascularization. Furthermore, we show that the regulation of prdx1 is mediated by Notch and BMP signals.

While flash memory has been widely adopted in the implementations of various storage systems, it recently receives a lot of attention in various system-component designs. With the unique characteristics of flash memory, it is highly challenging in the designs of management software, especially when reliability and cost management become major concerns. In this paper, popular implementations of the management software will be summarized, and the behavior analysis of flash-memory storage systems will then be addressed. Challenge issues for current and future implementations, especially on reliability and filesystem considerations, and some potential solutions will be presented.