3,331 research outputs found

    Plants protect themselves from herbivores by optimizing the distribution of chemical defenses

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    The influence of atmosphere on the performance of pure-phase WZ and ZB InAs nanowire transistors

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    We compare the characteristics of phase-pure MOCVD grown ZB and WZ InAs nanowire transistors in several atmospheres: air, dry pure N2_2 and O2_2, and N2_2 bubbled through liquid H2_2O and alcohols to identify whether phase-related structural/surface differences affect their response. Both WZ and ZB give poor gate characteristics in dry state. Adsorption of polar species reduces off-current by 2-3 orders of magnitude, increases on-off ratio and significantly reduces sub-threshold slope. The key difference is the greater sensitivity of WZ to low adsorbate level. We attribute this to facet structure and its influence on the separation between conduction electrons and surface adsorption sites. We highlight the important role adsorbed species play in nanowire device characterisation. WZ is commonly thought superior to ZB in InAs nanowire transistors. We show this is an artefact of the moderate humidity found in ambient laboratory conditions: WZ and ZB perform equally poorly in the dry gas limit yet equally well in the wet gas limit. We also highlight the vital role density-lowering disorder has in improving gate characteristics, be it stacking faults in mixed-phase WZ or surface adsorbates in pure-phase nanowires.Comment: Accepted for publication in Nanotechnolog

    Enhancing Grid Operation with Electric Vehicle Integration in Automatic Generation Control

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    Wind energy has been recognized as a clean energy source with significant potential for reducing carbon emissions. However, its inherent variability poses substantial challenges for power system operators due to its unpredictable nature. As a result, there is an increased dependence on conventional generation sources to uphold the power system balance, resulting in elevated operational costs and an upsurge in carbon emissions. Hence, an urgent need exists for alternative solutions that can reduce the burden on traditional generating units and optimize the utilization of reserves from non-fossil fuel technologies. Meanwhile, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology integration has emerged as a remedial approach to rectify power capacity shortages during grid operations, enhancing stability and reliability. This research focuses on harnessing electric vehicle (EV) storage capacity to compensate for power deficiencies caused by forecasting errors in large-scale wind energy-based power systems. A real-time dynamic power dispatch strategy is developed for the automatic generation control (AGC) system to integrate EVs and utilize their reserves optimally to reduce reliance on conventional power plants and increase system security. The results obtained from this study emphasize the significant prospects associated with the fusion of EVs and traditional power plants, offering a highly effective solution for mitigating real-time power imbalances in large-scale wind energy-based power systems

    Towards low-dimensional hole systems in Be-doped GaAs nanowires

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    GaAs was central to the development of quantum devices but is rarely used for nanowire-based quantum devices with InAs, InSb and SiGe instead taking the leading role. p-type GaAs nanowires offer a path to studying strongly-confined 0D and 1D hole systems with strong spin-orbit effects, motivating our development of nanowire transistors featuring Be-doped p-type GaAs nanowires, AuBe alloy contacts and patterned local gate electrodes towards making nanowire-based quantum hole devices. We report on nanowire transistors with traditional substrate back-gates and EBL-defined metal/oxide top-gates produced using GaAs nanowires with three different Be-doping densities and various AuBe contact processing recipes. We show that contact annealing only brings small improvements for the moderately-doped devices under conditions of lower anneal temperature and short anneal time. We only obtain good transistor performance for moderate doping, with conduction freezing out at low temperature for lowly-doped nanowires and inability to reach a clear off-state under gating for the highly-doped nanowires. Our best devices give on-state conductivity 95 nS, off-state conductivity 2 pS, on-off ratio ~10410^{4}, and sub-threshold slope 50 mV/dec at T = 4 K. Lastly, we made a device featuring a moderately-doped nanowire with annealed contacts and multiple top-gates. Top-gate sweeps show a plateau in the sub-threshold region that is reproducible in separate cool-downs and indicative of possible conductance quantization highlighting the potential for future quantum device studies in this material system

    Properties of an invariant set of weights of perceptrons

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    In this paper, the dynamics of weights of perceptrons are investigated based on the perceptron training algorithm. In particular, the condition that the system map is not injective is derived. Based on the derived condition, an invariant set that results to a bijective invariant map is characterized. Also, it is shown that some weights outside the invariant set will be moved to the invariant set. Hence, the invariant set is attracting. Computer numerical simulation results on various perceptrons with exhibiting various behaviors, such as fixed point behaviors, limit cycle behaviors and chaotic behaviors, are illustrated

    Diagnostic value of chest X-ray and echocardiography for cardiac tamponade in post cardiac surgery patients

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    Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of X-ray and echocardiography (ECHO) as a diagnostic tool for cardiac tamponade in adult cardiac surgery patients.Methods: Thirty five coronary artery bypass and graft surgery patients who developed cardiac tamponade at Cleveland clinic foundation, were included in this study. Their diagnosis was confirmed at the time of re-exploration in the operating room. These patients were followed retrospectively for demographics, X-ray and echocardiography findings. Abnormal and enlarged cardiac silhouette which was different from first postoperative X-ray was used as radiological criteria for tamponade while echocardiographic diagnosis was left to the discretion of cardiologist.Results: Twenty four males (69%) and 11 (31%) females with an average age of 60.7 +/- 15.2 years were included in this study. Only 7 (20%) patients met our criteria for radiological diagnosis of tamponade. All 35 patients showed pericardial effusion on ECHO while cardiac tamponade was present in 30 (86%) patients. Tamponade developed on an average on 4th postoperative day.CONCLUSION: Radiological diagnosis of cardiac tamponade based on changes in cardiac silhouette provide limited information while ECHO is a reliable diagnostic tool when combined with clinical findings
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