Electronic and photonic devices: experimental investigations of hydrogenated amorphous silicon substrate n+/i/p+ solar cell and fundamental properties of quantum wells with cylindrical geometry and applications to electronics and photonics

This thesis consists of two different parts: (I) experimental investigations of hydrogenated amorphous silicon substrate n[superscript]+/i/p[superscript]+ solar cells and, (II) fundamental properties of quantum wells with cylindrical geometry and applications to electronics and photonics;Part I. The substrate structural n[superscript]+/i/p[superscript]+ solar cells based on a-Si:H materials are fabricated by a radio frequency (RF) triode geometric plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) system. The solar cells have been electrically and optically tested. Two different substrates, tin-oxide coated glass and stainless steel foil, are used. An RF magnetron sputtering system is used to deposit the indium-tin-oxide (ITO) conductive transparent film for the front contact. Semi-transparent chromium (Cr), deposited by thermal evaporation, is used as an Ohmic front contact to the boron-doped a-(Si,C):H p[superscript]+ layer. The p[superscript]+ layer was smoothly connected to the i layer by an a-(Si,C):H buffer layer in which the carbon concentration is varied. This results in an enhancement of open circuit voltage and collection of photo-generated carriers. Effects of sub ppm boron compensation in the intrinsic layer were investigated. Temperature grading in the intrinsic layer, which modifies the energy band gap, was also studied. The effects of n[superscript]+ layer on the performance of the cell are investigated. It is shown that the device with a thick n[superscript]+ layer maintains a stable efficiency. In conclusion, a technique for depositing substrate a-Si:H solar cells in a single chamber system has been developed. This process yields cells with fill factors better than 65%, open circuit voltages of 0.8 volts and short circuit currents of 10 mA/cm[superscript]2, and conversion efficiencies of 5% for non-textured stainless steel substrates. The devices made in this work show a degradation of the conversion efficiency of less than 10% under prolonged (40 hours) 1 W/cm[superscript]2 Xenon light soaking;Part II. The fundamental properties of cylindrical geometry quantum well structures have been studied theoretically. A general iteration method and transfer matrix formalism are developed. It is shown that the quantum wells with cylindrical geometry display interesting features that originate from the specific symmetry of the structure. The electronic and optical properties can be changed dramatically by the utilization of a magnetic field. The applications of the new structure include resonant tunneling devices and in-situ tunable semiconductor quantum well lasers. It is also proposed that quantum devices that operating on the basic symmetry of this structure could have performance that is less sensitive to the thermal effect. The study is of fundamental importance to the basic knowledge of quantum well structures

Rad54: the Swiss Army knife of homologous recombination?

Homologous recombination (HR) is a ubiquitous cellular pathway that mediates transfer of genetic information between homologous or near homologous (homeologous) DNA sequences. During meiosis it ensures proper chromosome segregation in the first division. Moreover, HR is critical for the tolerance and repair of DNA damage, as well as in the recovery of stalled and broken replication forks. Together these functions preserve genomic stability and assure high fidelity transmission of the genetic material in the mitotic and meiotic cell divisions. This review will focus on the Rad54 protein, a member of the Snf2-family of SF2 helicases, which translocates on dsDNA but does not display strand displacement activity typical for a helicase. A wealth of genetic, cytological, biochemical and structural data suggests that Rad54 is a core factor of HR, possibly acting at multiple stages during HR in concert with the central homologous pairing protein Rad51

Structure‐Functional Analysis of Hydrogen Production Catalyzed by Molecular Cobalt Complexes with Pentadentate Ligands in Aqueous Solutions

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162775/2/ejic202000564.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162775/1/ejic202000564_am.pd

Negative emotion under haze: an investigation based on the microblog and weather records of Tianjin, China

Nowadays, many big cities are suffering from heavy air pollution and continuous haze weather. Compared with the threat on physical health, the influence of haze on people’s mental health is much less discussed in the current literature. Emotion is one of the most important indicators of mental health. To understand the negative impact of haze weather on the emotion of the people, we conducted an investigation based on historical weather records and microblog data in Tianjin, China. Specifically, an emotional thesaurus was generated with a microblog corpus collected from sample data. Based on the thesaurus, the public emotion under haze was statistically described. Then, through correlation analysis and comparative study, the relation and seasonal variation of haze and negative emotion of the public were well discussed. According to the study results, there was indeed a correlation between haze and negative emotion of the public, but the strength of this relationship varied under different conditions. The level of air pollution and weather context were both important factors that influence the mental effects of haze, and diverse patterns of negative emotion expression were demonstrated in different seasons of a year. Finally, for the benefit of people’s mental health under haze, recommendations were given for haze control from the side of government

MaturePred: Efficient Identification of MicroRNAs within Novel Plant Pre-miRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a set of short (19∼24 nt) non-coding RNAs that play significant roles as posttranscriptional regulators in animals and plants. The ab initio prediction methods show excellent performance for discovering new pre-miRNAs. While most of these methods can distinguish real pre-miRNAs from pseudo pre-miRNAs, few can predict the positions of miRNAs. Among the existing methods that can also predict the miRNA positions, most of them are designed for mammalian miRNAs, including human and mouse. Minority of methods can predict the positions of plant miRNAs. Accurate prediction of the miRNA positions remains a challenge, especially for plant miRNAs. This motivates us to develop MaturePred, a machine learning method based on support vector machine, to predict the positions of plant miRNAs for the new plant pre-miRNA candidates.A miRNA:miRNA* duplex is regarded as a whole to capture the binding characteristics of miRNAs. We extract the position-specific features, the energy related features, the structure related features, and stability related features from real/pseudo miRNA:miRNA* duplexes. A set of informative features are selected to improve the prediction accuracy. Two-stage sample selection algorithm is proposed to combat the serious imbalance problem between real and pseudo miRNA:miRNA* duplexes. The prediction method, MaturePred, can accurately predict plant miRNAs and achieve higher prediction accuracy compared with the existing methods. Further, we trained a prediction model with animal data to predict animal miRNAs. The model also achieves higher prediction performance. It further confirms the efficiency of our miRNA prediction method.The superior performance of the proposed prediction model can be attributed to the extracted features of plant miRNAs and miRNA*s, the selected training dataset, and the carefully selected features. The web service of MaturePred, the training datasets, the testing datasets, and the selected features are freely available at http://nclab.hit.edu.cn/maturepred/

Gamellia sinensis O.Ktze extract shows anti-colorectal cancer activity via MAPK/ERK signaling pathway

Purpose: To investigate the therapeutic effects of Gamellia sinensis O.Ktze extract (GSOE) on colorectal cancers, as well as the underlying mechanisms.Methods: The effect of GSOE on colorectal cancer cells HCT-116 or Caco-2 growth was tested, and then the apoptosis and invasion was analyzed by MTT, flow cytometry and Transwell assay in vitro. Next, the mice received three doses (200, 400 or 800 mg/kg/day, gastric perfusion) of GSOE to evaluate its effects on tumor growth. Lung metastasis in mouse xenograft models which were inoculated with HCT-116 or Caco-2 cells were also investigated. The expression of p-ERK and  p-MEK were evaluated by western blot analysis in HCT-116 and Caco-2 cells with or without GSOE treatment in vitro.Result: GSOE significantly inhibited colorectal cancer cell growth and induced  apoptosis or cell cycle arrest at G1- and S-phases in HCT-116 cells and Caco-2 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Moreover, GSOE effectively retarded tumor cell migration and invasion through ERK/MAPK signaling pathway suppression.Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that GSOE has an anti-tumor effect in colorectal cancer by inactivating ERK/MAPK signaling pathway.Keywords: Gamellia sinensis O.Ktze, Colorectal cancer, Invasion, Apoptosis, Cell cycle arrest ERK, MAPK

Kinematics of a Trinal-Branch Space Robotic Manipulator with Redundancy

AbstractThis paper presents a trinal branch space robotic manipulator with redundancy, due to hash application environments, such as in the station. One end- effector of the manipulator can be attached to the base, and other two be controlled to accomplish tasks. The manipulator permits operation of science payload, during periods when astronauts may not be present. In order to provide theoretic basis for kinematics optimization, dynamics optimization and fault-tolerant control, its inverse kinematics is analyzed by using screw theory, and its unified formulation is established. Base on closed form resolution of spherical wrist, a simplified inverse kinematics is proposed. Computer simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed inverse kinematics