You might not be familiar with this term, but, You will want to get your hands on this once you know about it. Dell has unveiled a 43 inch 4K display. This masterpiece is called Dell P4317Q Monitor. You can use 4 separate 1080 pixel resolution displays, It also lets you zoom in and use it as a single display in 4K resolution.

On the visual connectivity front, the multi-client monitor provides one DisplayPort 1.2 connector, one mini Display Port 1.2 connector, two HDMI 1.4 ports, and one VGA port for old-school desktops and laptops. The monitor also packs one USB 3.0 port that connects the device to a laptop or desktop, four USB 3.0 ports for connecting peripherals like a mouse or keyboard (one can recharge a device), one audio input jack, one headphone jack, one RS232 serial port, and two eight-watt speakers.

New Dell monitor sits on a fixed, non-swivel stand that tilts five degrees forward and ten degrees backward. There’s also a built-in cable management system so that the numerous cords aren’t draped everywhere and creating an ugly mess on the desktop. The panel can even be thrown onto a wall too thanks to 100mm and 200mm VESA mounts.

P4317Q doesn’t come cheap, costing a meaty $1,350 on the company’s storefront. Customers can get up to 10 percent back in rewards with Dell Advantage, free two-day shipping, and a three-year limited warranty with Advanced Exchange.

If an entire pot of coffee can brew in the time it takes for your computer to boot, it’s time to make some changes. Most likely your computer is not slow – it’s the dozens of programs turning on during startup that are slowing it down. Download a comprehensive tool easily disable certain programs during your startup.

If painfully slow surfing is your main problem, there are a couple quick changes you can make. Google Chrome is the best browser on the market now, known for speedy surfing. Under Chrome, go to Clear Browsing Data and check the boxes of temporary Internet files like cookies, cache, download history and browsing history.

This involves more than just uninstalling programs you don’t use anymore. If you’re not totally committed to the usual suspects, like Windows Media Player and Microsoft Office, switch to something that requires less computing power. Free applications can easily replace go-to programs, while speeding up your PC and giving you additional features at the same time.

Updates are annoying. It’s easy to click “remind me later” and avoid the notifications, until you’re so frustrated with your computer that you finally set aside an entire afternoon to update everything. Let’s solve this. Go to My Computer > Properties > Automatic Updates. Make sure this is set to Download and Install Automatically.

If you’re into gaming, a graphics card might be worth your while. Forewarning: You’ll have to toy with your motherboard to make this upgrade happen, but there are a lot of online tutorials you can follow. Finally, the most effective way to speed up your PC – which also requires tinkering – is to add more RAM (random access memory).

At first glance, the WD Blue SSHD looks like any other standard HDD; however, it is equipped with 8GB of NAND cache on the PC, which allows for a boost in performance. Because of its higher 4TB capacity, this model of the WD Blue is of the 3.5" form-factor, making it compatible with most desktop PCs.

The WD Blue SSHD drives are the company’s newest hybrid offering that is designed for power-consumers such as gamers and content creators looking to increase the overall performance of their higher-end workstation. WD quotes the Blue SSHDs to boast sustained speeds of 150MB/s for the 4TB model and 100MB/s for the 1TB, which falls more in the range of HDD technology performance. Because of its size, the 4TB model was built with the 3.5inch form factor, limiting its use cases to desktop computers only. The 1TB model, on the other hand, uses a 2.5 inch form factor, allowing it to be used for use cases where size is an issue.

Though certainly not as fast as full SSDs, hybrid drives offer enough NAND flash SSD technology to see a noticeable improvement in system boots, faster application loads, and an overall improved responsiveness over hard disk drive technology. However, the relevance of SSHDs (as well as HDDs) have been dwindling over the years, as the performance –heavy SSDs are continuously closing the gap between price and certainly have reached capacity parity with many brands. That being said, the WD Blue line is still less expensive than their SSD counterparts, which is enough to sway many consumers to go the SSHD route when upgrading their rig.

As such, WD has indicated that the WD Blue SSHD uses an advanced set of algorithms to track user data-usage, which then analyzes this information and prioritizes frequently used data; simply put, the 8GB of NAND store a pool of "hot" data for enhanced performance in the solid state portion of the device. It adapts, learns and optimizes as new applications and command requests alter over its life-span.

The WD Blue SSHD line comes in 1TB and 4TB capacities in 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch form factors, respectively. We will be looking at the 4TB Desktop model for this review, which comes with a 3-year warranty and a street price of $195.

At first glance, the WD Blue SSHD looks like any other standard HDD; however, it is equipped with 8GB of NAND cache on the PC, which allows for a boost in performance. Because of its higher 4TB capacity, this model of the WD Blue is of the 3.5" form-factor, making it compatible with most desktop PCs.

Looking at the top side of thedrive, the Blue SSHD is consistent with all of the recent WD releases sporting a white drive information label with blue branding. The front of the drives has the standard SATA and power connectors while the sides show 4 screw holes for easy mounting. When you turn the drive over, the drive’s circuit board will be visible.

When the PCB is removed, you will see the Marvell HDD controller as well as the JMicron controller with its 8GB of NAND cache.

All consumer SSD benchmarks are conducted with the StorageReview HP Z620 Workstation. We compared WD Blue SSHD with the following comparable:

Seagate Desktop SSHD 4TB (8GB MLC NAND, SATA 6Gb/s)

All IOMeter figures are represented as binary figures for MB/s speeds.

In our first test, which measures 2MB sequential performance, the WD Blue SSHD 4TB posted 142.86MB/s read and 142.79MB/s write, while the Seagate drive recorded slightly better results with 156.28MB/s read and 154.28MB/s write.

Our next test looks at 2MB random transfer performance. In this scenario, the WD Blue SSHD 4TB trailed the Seagate 4TB again, measuring reads and writes of 53.37MB/s and 65.48MB/s, respectively. The Seagate recorded 63.64MB/s read and 73.49MB/s write.

Switching to smaller 4K random transfers showed closer results between the two lines of drives. Here, the WD Blue SSHD 4TB measured 0.222MB/s in read activity and a leading 0.487MB/s in write activity while the Seagate 4TB recorded 0.237MB/s in read activity and 0.445MB/s for writes.

When looking at IOPS, the WD Blue 4TB model posted 56.72 IOPS read and another leading 124.67 IOPS for writes. The Seagate SSHD 4TB edged out the WD Blue in the read column again with 60.62 IOPS, though recorded slower writes (113.95 IOPS).

Moving to our 4K write latency benchmark, which looks at both the average and maximum readings, the WD Blue SSHD 4TB showed an average latency of 8.02ms with maximum latency at 1,516.97ms. The Seagate recorded 8.8ms (average) and 1,356.27ms (maximum).

Our last series of synthetic benchmarks compare the hard drives in a series of server mixed-workloads with a queue depth of ranging from 1 to 128. Each of our server profile tests has a strong preference towards read activity, ranging from 67% read with our database profile to 100% read in our web server profile.

The first is our database profile, which uses a 67% read and 33% write workload mix primarily centered on 8K transfer sizes. In the scenario, the WD Blue 4TB posted an initial IOPS of 61.25 IOPS while the terminal queue depths hit a leading 127.63 IOPS. Though the Seagate had a better recorded burst speed, it ended up with only 118.28 IOPS in the terminal.

Our web server profile is read-only with a spread of transfer sizes from 512-byte to 512KB. Here, the WD Blue 4TB drive provided a range of 56.97 IOPS to 106.74 IOPS while the Seagate offered 59.97 IOPS to 117.83 IOPS.

The next profile looks at a file server, with 80% read and 20% write workload spread out over multiple transfer sizes ranging from 512-byte to 64KB. In this scenario, the WD Blue 4TB delivered a range of 58.57 IOPS to 117.10 IOPS, while the Seagate 4TB SSHD ranged from 75.78 IOPS to 107.57 IOPS.

Our last profile looks at workstation activity, which is comprised of a 20% write and 80% read mixture using 8K transfers. The WD Blue 4TB SSHD drive started at the 68.93 IOPS mark and ended up with 120.15 IOPS at QD128. The Seagate drive posted slightly better results with a range of 78.97 IOPS to 124.17 IOPS.

For the average consumer, trying to translate random 4K write speeds into an everyday situation is pretty difficult. It helps when comparing drives in every setting possible, but it doesn't exactly work out into faster everyday usage or better game loading times. For this reason we turned to our StorageMark 2010 traces, which include HTPC and Gaming traces to help readers find out how a drive might rank under these conditions.

The first real-life test is our HTPC scenario. In this test we include: playing one 720P HD movie in Media Player Classic, one 480P SD movie playing in VLC, three movies downloading simultaneously through iTunes, and one 1080i HDTV stream being recorded through Windows Media Center over a 15 minute period. Higher IOPS and MB/s rates with lower latency times are preferred. In this trace we recorded 2,986MB being written to the drive and 1,924MB being read.

In our HTPC profile, the WD Blue SSHD 4TB posted noticeably better results than its Seagate comparable, clocking in at 94.05MB/s and 1,265 IOPS while average latency was calculated at 6.3ms. The Seagate SSHD posted just 67.21MB/s, 904 IOPS and 8.8ms in average latency.

Our second real-life test covers disk activity in a gaming environment. Unlike the HTPC or Productivity trace, this one relies heavily on the read performance of a drive. To give a simple breakdown of read/write percentages, the HTPC test is 64% write, 36% read, the Productivity test is 59% write and 41% read, while the gaming trace is 6% write and 94% read. The test consists of a Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit system pre-configured with Steam, with Grand Theft Auto 4, Left 4 Dead 2, and Mass Effect 2 already downloaded and installed. The trace captures the heavy read activity of each game loading from the start, as well as textures as the game progresses. In this trace we recorded 426MB being written to the drive and 7,235MB being read.

In our read-intensive Gaming trace, WD Blue SSHD produced 64.30MB/s, 1,200 IOPS, and an average latency of 6.6ms while the Seagate SSHD posted 93.98MB/s, 1,749 IOPS, and 4.5ms.

In our power efficiency tests, we measured the WD and Seagate SSHDs using both 5 and 12 voltages (spin-ups). Here, the idle consumption from the WD Blue SSHD measured 1.22W (5v) and 3.57W (12v) for a total of 4.79W. The Seagate posted idle readings of 0.87W (5v) and 3.13 (12v) for a total of 4.00W. The highest consumption from the WD Blue SSHD 4TB was recorded during the startup, which measured 22.91W (12v) while the Seagate drive had 14.58W using the same voltage. 

The 4TB WD Blue hybrid drive is designed to offer an improvement in overall performance for desktop workstations, including faster boot ups and faster application load times; both of which are ideal for demographics like gamers and content creators. As mentioned earlier, SSHDs are a far cry from full solid-state technology when looking at speed and responsiveness goes; however, they are equipped with enough NAND flash technology to see an improvement with every day use all the while reaping the benefits of the higher HDD storage capacity at a lesser cost. Though SSDs are starting close these gaps as years and technology progress, hybrid drives seem to still be relevant due to their much lower cost.

When diving into its performance, the 4TB WD Blue posted 142.86MB/s read and 142.79MB/s write when measuring 2MB sequential, while random transfer speeds hit 53.37MB/s read and 65.48MB/s write, both of which are roughly one third the performance of most consumer-grade SSDs. Overall, its consumer synthetic benchmarks were weaker than its direct competitor, the 4TB Seagate Desktop SSHD; however, the WD Blue’s real-world performance gave us a better HTPC as it posted results of 94.05MB/s and 1,265 IOPS while average latency was calculated at 6.3ms during our HTPC workload (compared to the Seagate's 67.21MB/s, 904 IOPS and 8.8ms in average latency). However it lagged behind the Seagate in our gaming benchmark.

Ultimately, the 4TB WD Blue SSHD is a worthy choice for a niche part of the storage market: power-consumers looking to upgrade their desktop system with a high-capacity, high performing drive, but aren’t looking to pay the premium price of SSDs, which can get pretty expensive.

Global climate change, international travel, and ineffective vector control programs are aiding the emergence of infectious diseases globally. The currently expanding Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic is one such problem. The rapid expansion of this disease to epidemic proportions in South America in 2015-16 has led the World Health Organization to declare ZIKV a public health emergency on February 1, 2016.

Two main reasons behind this are suspected association of the virus to cases of microcephaly in children born of ZIKV-infected mothers and Guillain- Barré syndrome (GBS) -- an autoimmune disease that may occasionally lead to a fatal form of paralysis.

ZIKV is transmitted primarily by two mosquito vectors:

1) Aedes aegypti, prevalent mostly in tropical climates, and

2) Aedes albopictus which ranges in the Americas up to the Great Lakes. Mass gatherings like carnivals and Olympics, from where infected visitors may carry the virus to their countries around the globe, have the potential of expanding ZIKV infection into pandemics.

No drug is known to treat ZIKV infection; neither do we have any vaccine which can prevent the spread of the virus. While scientists and global health authorities are trying to cope with the situation, computer-assisted approaches itemized below may help as decision support systems:

1) Computer-Assisted Drug Design

Once some bioassay is developed, computer-assisted methods can help to select manageable subsets from large chemical libraries for testing in high throughput screening (HTS) protocols. Pharmacophores derived from active molecules can also be used to screen libraries for ZIKV drug discovery.

2) Computer-Aided Vaccine Design
Computational approaches to peptide vaccine design have been developed by us. Because peptides are cheaply available from commercial vendors, lab testing of candidate peptides as potential ZIKV vaccine can be pursued within a reasonable time frame and modest funding.

3) Mathematical Approaches for the Characterization of Emerging ZIKV Strains

Alignment-free mathematical descriptors for characterization of DNA/ RNA sequences of pathogens like H5N1 and H5N2 pandemic bird flu have proved effective for comparative studies. A battery of mathematical sequence descriptors may provide us a quantitative view of the sequences, in whole or in part as required and may aid in the surveillance of emerging strains.

The topic is discussed in detail in the editorial article, Computer-assisted approaches as decision support systems in the overall strategy of combating emerging diseases: Some comments regarding drug design, vaccinomics, and genomic surveillance of the Zika virus, published in the journal, Current Computer-Aided Drug Design.