Distribution of mast cells in lung tissues of rats exposed to biomass smoke

This study was designed to evaluate the distribution of mast cells in the lung tissues of rats exposed to biomass  smoke. Fifty six female Wistar albino adult rats were used. They were divided into two experimental groups  (control and biomass smoke-treated), each containing 28 animals. Control rats were not exposed to the  biomass smoke at any time during the experiment. Rats in the treatment group were exposed daily (one hour)  to biomass smoke for 3, 6 or 9 months. Lung tissues samples were obtained under deep anesthesia from the  randomly selected 7 animals in both groups. Lung tissues were fixed in Mota’s fixative (BLA) for 24 h and  embedded in paraffin. Sections of 6 μm thickness were cut and stained with 0.5% toluidine blue in 0.5 N  hydrochloric acid at pH 0.5 for 30 min. The numbers of mast cell in lung tissues of the animals exposed to  the biomass for 6 or 9 months were significantly (P<0.05) higher than controls. This study showed that long  term exposure to biomass smoke was associated with the increased number of mast cells in the lung.

Design of high power S-band GaN MMIC power amplifiers for WiMAX applications

This paper reports two different S band GaN MMIC PA designs for WiMAX applications. First PA has a 42.6 dBm output power with a 55%PAE @ 3.5 GHz and 16 dB small signal gain in the 3.2-3.8 GHz frequency range. When two of these MMICs were combined by using off-chip Lange Couplers, 45.3 dBm output power with a 45%PAE @3.5Ghz and 16 dB small signal gain were obtained with less than 0.2 dB gain ripple in the 3.3-3.8 GHz frequency range. © 2011 IEEE

Fabrication of high-speed resonant cavity enhanced schottky photodiodes

We report the fabrication and testing of a GaAs-based high-speed resonant cavity enhanced (RCE) Schottky photodiode. The top-illuminated RCE detector is constructed by integrating a Schottky contact, a thin absorption region (In0.8Ga0.92As) and a distributed AlAs-GaAs Bragg mirror. The Schottky contact metal serves as a high-reflectivity top mirror in the RCE detector structure. The devices were fabricated by using a microwave-compatible fabrication process. The resulting spectral photo response had a resonance around 895 nm, in good agreement with our simulations. The full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) was 15 nm, and the enhancement factor was in excess of 6. The photodiode had an experimental setup limited temporal response of 18 ps FWHM, corresponding to a 3-dB bandwidth of 20 GHz

High-speed >90% quantum-efficiency p-i-n photodiodes with a resonance wavelength adjustable in the 795-835 nm range

We report GaAs/AlGaAs-based high-speed, high-efficiency, resonant cavity enhanced p-i-n photodiodes. The devices were fabricated by using a microwave-compatible fabrication process. By using a postprocess recess etch, we tuned the resonance wavelength from 835 to 795 nm while keeping the peak efficiencies above 90%. The maximum quantum efficiency was 92% at a resonance wavelength of 823 nm. The photodiode had an experimental setup-limited temporal response of 12 ps. When the system response is deconvolved, the 3 dB bandwidth corresponds to 50 GHz, which is in good agreement with our theoretical calculations. © 1999 American Institute of Physics

Spin relaxation in (110) and (001) InAs/GaSb superlattices

We report an enhancement of the electron spin relaxation time (T1) in a (110) InAs/GaSb superlattice by more than an order of magnitude (25 times) relative to the corresponding (001) structure. The spin dynamics were measured using polarization sensitive pump probe techniques and a mid-infrared, subpicosecond PPLN OPO. Longer T1 times in (110) superlattices are attributed to the suppression of the native interface asymmetry and bulk inversion asymmetry contributions to the precessional D'yakonov Perel spin relaxation process. Calculations using a nonperturbative 14-band nanostructure model give good agreement with experiment and indicate that possible structural inversion asymmetry contributions to T1 associated with compositional mixing at the superlattice interfaces may limit the observed spin lifetime in (110) superlattices. Our findings have implications for potential spintronics applications using InAs/GaSb heterostructures.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Stable ℋ∞controller design for systems with time delays

One of the difficult problems of robust control theory is to find strongly stabilizing controllers (i.e. stable controllers leading to stable feedback system) which satisfy a certain ℋ∞ performance objective. In this work we discuss stable ℋ∞controller design methods for various classes of systems with time delays. We consider sensitivity minimization problem in this setting for SISO plants. We also discuss a suboptimal design method for stable ℋ∞controllers for MIMO plants. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

A novel method for lung segmentation on chest CT images: complex-valued artificial neural network with complex wavelet transform

Image segmentation is an important step in many computer vision algorithms. The objective of segmentation is to obtained an optimal region of convergences (ROC). Error in this stage will impact all higher level activities. This paper focuses on a new efficient method denoted as Complex-Valued Artificial Neural Network with Complex Wavelet Transform (CWT-CVANN) for the segmentation of lung region on chest CT images. In this combined architecture is composed of two cascade stages: feature extraction with various levels of complex wavelet transform, and segmentation with complex-valued artificial neural network. Hem, 32 CT images of 6 female and 26 male patients were recorded from, Baskent University Radiology Department. (This collection includes 10 images with benign nodules and 22 images with malign nodules. Averaged age of patients is 64. Each CT slice used in this study has dimensions of 752x 752 pixels with grey level) In only two seconds of processing time per each CT image, 99.79% averaged accuracy rate is obtained using 3(rd) level CWT-CVANN for segmentation of the lung region. Thus, it is concluded that CWT-CVANN is a comprising method in luny region segmentation problem

Distribution of mast cells in lung tissues of rats exposed to biomass smoke

This study was designed to evaluate the distribution of mast cells in the lung tissues of rats exposed to biomass smoke. Fifty six female Wistar albino adult rats were used. They were divided into two experimental groups (control and biomass smoke-treated), each containing 28 animals. Control rats were not exposed to the biomass smoke at any time during the experiment. Rats in the treatment group were exposed daily (one hour) to biomass smoke for 3, 6 or 9 months. Lung tissues samples were obtained under deep anesthesia from the randomly selected 7 animals in both groups. Lung tissues were fixed in Mota's fixative (BLA) for 24 h and embedded in paraffin. Sections of 6 µm thickness were cut and stained with 0.5% toluidine blue in 0.5 N hydrochloric acid at pH 0.5 for 30 min. The numbers of mast cell in lung tissues of the animals exposed to the biomass for 6 or 9 months were significantly (P<0.05) higher than controls. This study showed that long term exposure to biomass smoke was associated with the increased number of mast cells in the lung