Electrodeposition from supercritical fluids

Recent studies have shown that it is possible to electrodeposit a range of materials, such as Cu, Ag and Ge, from various supercritical fluids, including hydrofluorocarbons and mixtures of CO2 with suitable co-solvents. In this perspective we discuss the relatively new field of electrodeposition from supercritical fluids. The perspective focuses on some of the underlying physical chemistry and covers both practical and scientific aspects of electrodeposition from supercritical fluids. We also discuss possible applications for supercritical fluid electrodeposition and suggest some key developments that are required to take the field to the next stage

PCV34 Evaluation of pharmacological management for type-2 diabetes post-myocardial infarction

Tàpies Puig, AntoniPla de detall de l'obra "Monument a Picasso", situat al Passeig Picasso al costat del Parc de la Ciutadella. S'observa un cub de vidre sobre un estany, a l'interior del qual hi ha un sofà foradat per unes llances

Revisiting loss-specific training of filter-based MRFs for image restoration

It is now well known that Markov random fields (MRFs) are particularly effective for modeling image priors in low-level vision. Recent years have seen the emergence of two main approaches for learning the parameters in MRFs: (1) probabilistic learning using sampling-based algorithms and (2) loss-specific training based on MAP estimate. After investigating existing training approaches, it turns out that the performance of the loss-specific training has been significantly underestimated in existing work. In this paper, we revisit this approach and use techniques from bi-level optimization to solve it. We show that we can get a substantial gain in the final performance by solving the lower-level problem in the bi-level framework with high accuracy using our newly proposed algorithm. As a result, our trained model is on par with highly specialized image denoising algorithms and clearly outperforms probabilistically trained MRF models. Our findings suggest that for the loss-specific training scheme, solving the lower-level problem with higher accuracy is beneficial. Our trained model comes along with the additional advantage, that inference is extremely efficient. Our GPU-based implementation takes less than 1s to produce state-of-the-art performance.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, appear at 35th German Conference, GCPR 2013, Saarbr\"ucken, Germany, September 3-6, 2013. Proceeding

Quasi-phase-matched Faraday rotation in semiconductor waveguides with a magnetooptic cladding for monolithically integrated optical isolators

Strategies are developed for obtaining nonreciprocal polarization mode conversion, also known as Faraday rotation, in waveguides in a format consistent with silicon-on-insulator or III–V semiconductor photonic integrated circuits. Fabrication techniques are developed using liftoff lithography and sputtering to obtain garnet segments as upper claddings, which have an evanescent wave interaction with the guided light. A mode solver approach is used to determine the modal Stokes parameters for such structures, and design considerations indicate that quasi-phase-matched Faraday rotation for optical isolator applications could be obtained with devices on the millimeter length scale

Controlling mixed conductivity in Na 1/2 Bi 1/2 TiO 3 using A-site non-stoichiometry and Nb-donor doping

Precise control of electronic and/or ionic conductivity in electroceramics is crucial to achieve the desired functional properties as well as to improve manufacturing practices. We recently reported the conventional piezoelectric material Na1/2Bi1/2TiO3 (NBT) can be tuned into a novel oxide-ion conductor with an oxide-ion transport number (tion) > 0.9 by creating bismuth and oxygen vacancies. A small Bi-excess in the nominal starting composition (Na0.50Bi0.50+xTiO3+3x/2, x = 0.01) or Nb-donor doping (Na0.50Bi0.50Ti1−yNbyO3+y/2, 0.005 ≤ y ≤ 0.030) can reduce significantly the electrical conductivity to create dielectric behaviour by filling oxygen vacancies and suppressing oxide ion conduction (tion ≤ 0.10). Here we show a further increase in the starting Bi-excess content (0.02 ≤ x ≤ 0.10) reintroduces significant levels of oxide-ion conductivity and increases tion ∼ 0.4–0.6 to create mixed ionic/electronic behaviour. The switch from insulating to mixed conducting behaviour for x > 0.01 is linked to the presence of Bi-rich secondary phases and we discuss possible explanations for this effect. Mixed conducting behaviour with tion ∼ 0.5–0.6 can also be achieved with lower levels of Nb-doping (y ∼ 0.003) due to incomplete filling of oxygen vacancies without the presence of secondary phases. NBT can now be compositionally tailored to exhibit three types of electrical behaviour; Type I (oxide-ion conductor); Type II (mixed ionic-electronic conductor); Type III (insulator) and these results reveal an approach to fine-tune tion in NBT from near unity to zero. In addition to developing new oxide-ion and now mixed ionic/electronic NBT-based conductors, this flexibility in control of oxygen vacancies allows fine-tuning of both the dielectric/piezoelectric properties and design manufacturing practices for NBT-based multilayer piezoelectric devices

Identification of a candidate gene for Rc-D1, a locus controlling red coleoptile colour in wheat

Red coleoptile is an easily observed agronomic trait of wheat and has been extensively studied. However, the molecular mechanism of this trait has not yet been revealed. In this study, the MYB gene TaMYB-D1 was isolated from the wheat cultivar ‘Gy115’, which possesses red coleoptiles. This gene resided at the short arm of the homoelogous group 7 chromosomes. TaMYB-D1 was the only gene expressed in the coleoptiles of ‘Gy115’ and was not expressed in ‘Opata’ and ‘CS’, which have uncoloured coleoptiles. Phylogenetic analysis placed TaMYB-D1 very close to ZmC1 and other MYB proteins regulating anthocyanin biosynthesis. The encoded protein of TaMYB-D1 had an integrated DNA binding domain of 102 amino acids and a transcription domain with 42 amino acids, similar to the structure of ZmC1. Transient expression analysis in onion epidermal cells showed that TaMYB-D1 was located at the plant nucleus, which suggested its role as a transcription factor. The expression of TaMYB-D1 was accompanied with the expression of TaDFR and anthocyanin biosynthesis in the development of the coleoptile of ‘Gy115’. Transient expression analysis showed that only TaMYB-D1 induced a few ‘Opata’ coleoptile cells to synthesize anthocyanin in light, and the gene also induced a colour change to red in many cells with the help of ZmR. All of these results suggested TaMYB-D1 as the candidate gene for the red coleoptile trait of ‘Gy115’

Watching plants grow:A position paper on computer vision and Arabidopsis thaliana

The authors present a comprehensive overview of image processing and analysis work done to support research into the model flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Beside the plant's importance in biological research, using image analysis to obtain experimental measurements of it is an interesting vision problem in its own right, involving the segmentation and analysis of sequences of images of objects whose shape varies between individual specimens and also changes over time. While useful measurements can be obtained by segmenting a whole plant from the background, they suggest that the increased range and precision of measurements made available by leaf‐level segmentation makes this a problem well worth solving. A variety of approaches have been tried by biologists as well as computer vision researchers. This is an interdisciplinary area and the computer vision community has an important contribution to make. They suggest that there is a need for publicly available datasets with ground truth annotations to enable the evaluation of new approaches and to support the building of training data for modern data‐driven computer vision approaches, which are those most likely to result in the kind of fully automated systems that will be of use to biologists

Spin diffusion at finite electric and magnetic fields

Spin transport properties at finite electric and magnetic fields are studied by using the generalized semiclassical Boltzmann equation. It is found that the spin diffusion equation for non-equilibrium spin density and spin currents involves a number of length scales that explicitly depend on the electric and magnetic fields. The set of macroscopic equations can be used to address a broad range of the spin transport problems in magnetic multilayers as well as in semiconductor heterostructure. A specific example of spin injection into semiconductors at arbitrary electric and magnetic fields is illustrated

Thermodynamics Inducing Massive Particles' Tunneling and Cosmic Censorship

By calculating the change of entropy, we prove that the first law of black hole thermodynamics leads to the tunneling probability of massive particles through the horizon, including the tunneling probability of massive charged particles from the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole and the Kerr-Newman black hole. Novelly, we find the trajectories of massive particles are close to that of massless particles near the horizon, although the trajectories of massive charged particles may be affected by electromagnetic forces. We show that Hawking radiation as massive particles tunneling does not lead to violation of the weak cosmic-censorship conjecture