Investigation of electronic trap states in organic photovoltaic materials by current-based deep level transient spectroscopy

Current-based deep level transient spectroscopy was used to study trap states in poly(3- hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT), [6,6]-phenyl-C61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) and P3HT:PCBM blend. The obtained spectra showed traps of 87 meV activation energy in pure P3HT and 21 meV for PCBM. The blend shows a complex emission rate spectrum consisting of several different emission rate bands in the range of (0.1-30) s^-1, yielding activation energies between about 30 meV and 160 meV.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A comparison of atomistic and continuum theoretical approaches to determine electronic properties of GaN/AlN quantum dots

In this work we present a comparison of multiband k.p-models, the effective bond-orbital approach, and an empirical tight-binding model to calculate the electronic structure for the example of a truncated pyramidal GaN/AlN self-assembled quantum dot with a zincblende structure. For the system under consideration, we find a very good agreement between the results of the microscopic models and the 8-band k.p-formalism, in contrast to a 6+2-band k.p-model, where conduction band and valence band are assumed to be decoupled. This indicates a surprisingly strong coupling between conduction and valence band states for the wide band gap materials GaN and AlN. Special attention is paid to the possible influence of the weak spin-orbit coupling on the localized single-particle wave functions of the investigated structure

Guidelines for emergency laparoscopy

Acute abdominal pain is a leading symptom in many surgical emergency patients. Laparoscopy allows for accurate diagnosis and immediate therapy of many intraabdominal pathologies. The guidelines of the EAES (European Association for Endoscopic Surgery) provides scientifically founded recommendations about the role of laparoscopy in the different situations. Generally, laparoscopy is well suited for the therapy of the majority of diseases that cause acute abdominal pain

Contribution of increasing plasma membrane to the energetic cost of early zebrafish embryogenesis

© The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Rodenfels, J., Sartori, P., Golfier, S., Nagendra, K., Neugebauer, K. M., & Howard, J. Contribution of increasing plasma membrane to the energetic cost of early zebrafish embryogenesis. Molecular Biology of the Cell, 31(7), (2020): 520-526, doi:10.1091/mbc.E19-09-0529.How do early embryos allocate the resources stored in the sperm and egg? Recently, we established isothermal calorimetry to measure heat dissipation by living zebra­fish embryos and to estimate the energetics of specific developmental events. During the reductive cleavage divisions, the rate of heat dissipation increases from ∼60 nJ · s−1 at the two-cell stage to ∼90 nJ · s−1 at the 1024-cell stage. Here we ask which cellular process(es) drive this increasing energetic cost. We present evidence that the cost is due to the increase in the total surface area of all the cells of the embryo. First, embryo volume stays constant during the cleavage stage, indicating that the increase is not due to growth. Second, the heat increase is blocked by nocodazole, which inhibits DNA replication, mitosis, and cell division; this suggests some aspect of cell proliferation contributes to these costs. Third, the heat increases in proportion to the total cell surface area rather than total cell number. Fourth, the heat increase falls within the range of the estimated costs of maintaining and assembling plasma membranes and associated proteins. Thus, the increase in total plasma membrane associated with cell proliferation is likely to contribute appreciably to the total energy budget of the embryo.The analysis of these data was initiated in the 2019 Physical Biology of the Cell course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. We acknowledge the support and feedback from the course directors and participants. This work was supported by funding from EMBO Long-Term Fellowship ALTF 754–2015 (to J.R.), the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Membership in Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study (to P.S.), National Institutes of Health (NIH) R21 HD094013 (to K.M.N.), and NIH R01 GM110386 (to J.H.). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH

Time-based parameter identification and controller design for motion control systems

Today, a cascaded system of position loop, velocity loop and current loop is standard in industrial motion controllers. Each controller has to be designed according to its subordinated system behavior. Usually, the controller commissioning is realized in the frequency domain with the open-loop frequency response. In contrast to that, several tuning rules in the time domain are applicable, which require a model of the plant. The paper presents a method for the identification of plant parameters in the time domain. The approach is based on the auto relay feedback experiment by Åström/ Hägglund and a modified technique of gradual pole compensation. In addition to a theoretical description, the paper presents the implementation as an automatic application in the motion control system SIMOTION. Finally, the velocity controller is adjusted with various tuning rules. Furthermore, the identification results as well as the achievable controller performance on a test rig will be presented

Uniformly Rotating Homogeneous Rings in post-Newtonian Gravity

In this paper uniformly rotating relativistic rings are investigated analytically utilizing two different approximations simultaneously: (1) an expansion about the thin ring limit (the cross-section is small compared with the size of the whole ring) (2) post-Newtonian expansions. The analytic results for rings are compared with numerical solutions.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, v1: 2 tables added, agrees with published versio

Consortium Proposal NFDI-MatWerk

This is the official proposal the NFDI-consortium NFDI-MatWerk submitted to the DFG within the request for funding the project. Visit www.dfg.de/nfdi for more infos on the German National Research Data Infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur - NFDI) initiative. Visit www.nfdi-matwerk.de for last infos about the project NFDI-MatWerk

Detection of Tumor Cell-Specific mRNA in the Peripheral Blood of Patients with Breast Cancer-Evaluation of Several Markers with Real-Time Reverse Transcription-PCR

It is widely known that cells from epithelial tumors, e. g., breast cancer, detach from their primary tissue and enter blood circulation. We show that the presence of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in samples of patients with primary and metastatic breast cancer can be detected with an array of selected tumor-marker-genes by reverse transcription real-time PCR. The focus of the presented work is on detecting differences in gene expression between healthy individuals and adjuvant and metastatic breast cancer patients, not an accurate quantification of these differences. Therefore, total RNA was isolated from blood samples of healthy donors and patients with primary or metastatic breast cancer after enrichment of mononuclear cells by density gradient centrifugation. After reverse transcription real-time PCR was carried out with a set of marker genes (BCSP, CK8, Her2, MGL, CK18, CK19). B2M and GAPDH were used as reference genes. Blood samples from patients with metastatic disease revealed increased cytokine gene levels in comparison to normal blood samples. Detection of a single gene was not sufficient to detect CTCs by reverse transcription real-time PCR. Markers used here were selected based on a recent study detecting cancer cells on different protein levels. The combination of such a marker array leads to higher and more specific discovery rates, predominantly in metastatic patients. Identification of CTCs by PCR methods may lead to better diagnosis and prognosis and could help to choose an adequate therapy