Metallic nanorings for broadband, enhanced extraction of light from solid-state emitters

We report on the increased extraction of light emitted by solid-state sources embedded within high refractive index materials. This is achieved by making use of a local lensing effect by sub-micron metallic rings deposited on the sample surface and centered around single emitters. We show enhancements in the intensity of the light emitted by InAs/GaAs single quantum dot lines into free space as high as a factor 20. Such a device is intrinsically broadband and therefore compatible with any kind of solid-state light source. We foresee the fabrication of metallic rings via scalable techniques, like nano-imprint, and their implementation to improve the emission of classical and quantum light from solid-state sources. Furthermore, while increasing the brightness of the devices, the metallic rings can also act as top contacts for the local application of electric fields for carrier injection or wavelength tuning.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Three-way electrical gating characteristics of metallic Y-junction carbon nanotubes

Y-junction based carbon nanotube (CNT) transistors exhibit interesting switching behaviors, and have the structural advantage that the electrical gate for current modulation can be formed by any of the three constituent branches. In this letter, we report on the gating characteristics of metallic Y-CNT morphologies. By measuring the output conductance and transconductance we conclude that the efficiency and gain depend on the branch diameter and is electric field controlled. Based on these principles, we propose a design for a Y-junction based CNT switching device, with tunable electrical properties

Bucillamine prevents cisplatin-induced ototoxicity through induction of glutathione and antioxidant genes.

Bucillamine is used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. This study investigated the protective effects of bucillamine against cisplatin-induced damage in auditory cells, the organ of Corti from postnatal rats (P2) and adult Balb/C mice. Cisplatin increases the catalytic activity of caspase-3 and caspase-8 proteases and the production of free radicals, which were significantly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine. Bucillamine induces the intranuclear translocation of Nrf2 and thereby increases the expression of γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γ-GCS) and glutathione synthetase (GSS), which further induces intracellular antioxidant glutathione (GSH), heme oxygenase 1 (HO-1) and superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2). However, knockdown studies of HO-1 and SOD2 suggest that the protective effect of bucillamine against cisplatin is independent of the enzymatic activity of HO-1 and SOD. Furthermore, pretreatment with bucillamine protects sensory hair cells on organ of Corti explants from cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity concomitantly with inhibition of caspase-3 activation. The auditory-brainstem-evoked response of cisplatin-injected mice shows marked increases in hearing threshold shifts, which was markedly suppressed by pretreatment with bucillamine in vivo. Taken together, bucillamine protects sensory hair cells from cisplatin through a scavenging effect on itself, as well as the induction of intracellular GSH

The Estimation of Minimum Efficient Scale of the Port Industry

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: The estimation of minimum efficient scale of the port industry journaltitle: Transport Policy articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2016.04.012 content_type: article copyright: © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

High Confidence Testing for Instrumentation System-on-Chip with Unknown-Good-Yield

SoCs are in general built with embedded IP cores, each of which is procured from different IP providers with no prior information on known-good-yield (KGY). In practice, partial testing is a practical choice for assuring the yield of the product under the stringent time-to-market requirements. Therefore, a proper sampling technique is a key to high confidence testing and cost effectiveness. Based on previous research, this paper proposes a novel statistical testing technique for increasingly hybrid integrated systems fabricated on a single silicon die with no a-priori empirical yield data. This problem is referred to as the unknown-good-yield (UKGY) problem. The proposed testing method, referred to as regressive testing (RegT) in this paper, exploits another way around by using parameters (referred to as assistant variables (AV)) that are employed to evaluate the yields of randomly sampled SoCs and thereby estimating the good yield by using a regression analysis method with regard to confidence intervals. Numerous simulations are conducted to demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed RegT in comparison to characterization-based testing methods