Characterization of photon recycling in thin crystalline GaAs light emitting diodes

Gallium arsenide light emitting diodes (LEDs) were fabricated using molecular beam epitaxial films on GaAs substrates and removed by epitaxial lift-off (ELO). Lifted off devices were then mounted on a Si wafer using a Pd/Au/Cr contact layer, which also served as a back surface reflector. Devices were characterized by electrical and optical measurements, and the results for devices on the GaAs substrate were compared to those for EL0 devices. EL0 LEDs coated with a ZnS/MgF2 antireflection coating exhibited an optical output that was up to six times that of LEDs on GaAs substrates. At the same time, the measured current-voltage characteristics of the EL0 devices displayed a lower IZ = 1 current component. EL0 LEDs with efficiencies up to 12.5% were realized. We attribute these results to photon recycIing enhanced by the back-surface reflector in the EL0 LEDs. The luminescence versus current and current versus voltage characteristics of the LEDs were analyzed to obtain the nonradiative minority carrier lifetimes and the photon recycling factors. The results demonstrate that the measured characteristics are well described by photon recycling theory. EL0 LEDs may prove useful for characterizing recombination processes in LEDs, and thin-crystalline structures could provide substantial efficiency enhancements for LEDs and solar cells

Transistor-Based Studies of Heavy Dop-ing Effects in n-GaAs

The n2ieDp product (where n2ie is the np product and Dp is the minority hole mobility) in heavily doped n‐GaAs has been measured by electrical characterization of p‐n‐p GaAs homojunction transistors with base dopings ranging from approximately 1×1017 to 9×1018 cm−3. The measured n2ieDp product decreases as the doping density increases. These results suggest that nie is roughly constant with doping density, in sharp contrast to the large increase observed for p‐type GaAs. This work shows that when designing GaAs bipolar devices, it is important to consider the large difference in effective band gap between n+ and p+ regions

Very low resistance nonalloyed ohmic contacts using low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy of GaAs

Ex situ nonalloyed ohmic contacts were made to n- and p‐type GaAs using low‐temperature molecular beam epitaxy. For n‐type GaAs, Ag, and Ti/Au nonalloyed contacts displayed specific contact resistitivities of mid 10-7 ohm cm2. For p‐type GaAs, nonalloyed Ti/Au contacts with specific contact resistivities of about 10-7 ohm cm2 were obtained

Separation and liquid-liquid extraction of thorium(IV) as sulfate complex withsynergistic mixture of N-n-octylaniline and trioctylamine as an extractant

ABSTRACT Extraction of thorium from aqueous sulphuric acid medium with a synergistic mixture of N-n-octylaniline and trioctylamine (TOA) in xylene is reported in this paper. The effects of varying the concentration of sulphuric acid, N-n-octylaniline and trioctylamine on the distribution ratio of Thorium have been studied. Based on the results obtained, the possible extraction mechanism has been discussed. The determination of thorium and its separation from synthetic mixture has been suggested. The method has been extended to the analysis of thorium in monazite sand and gas mantle

UVB-Induced Tumor Heterogeneity Diminishes Immune Response in Melanoma

Although clonal neo-antigen burden is associated with improved response to immune therapy, the functional basis for this remains unclear. Here we study this question in a novel controlled mouse melanoma model that enables us to explore the effects of intra-tumor heterogeneity (ITH) on tumor aggressiveness and immunity independent of tumor mutational burden. Induction of UVB-derived mutations yields highly aggressive tumors with decreased anti-tumor activity. However, single-cell-derived tumors with reduced ITH are swiftly rejected. Their rejection is accompanied by increased T cell reactivity and a less suppressive microenvironment. Using phylogenetic analyses and mixing experiments of single-cell clones, we dissect two characteristics of ITH: the number of clones forming the tumor and their clonal diversity. Our analysis of melanoma patient tumor data recapitulates our results in terms of overall survival and response to immune checkpoint therapy. These findings highlight the importance of clonal mutations in robust immune surveillance and the need to quantify patient ITH to determine the response to checkpoint blockade

Evidence-based guidelines and decision support services: a discussion and evaluation in triple assessment of suspected breast cancer

Widespread health service goals to improve consistency and safety in patient care have prompted considerable investment in the development of evidence-based clinical guidelines. Computerised decision support (CDS) systems have been proposed as a means to implement guidelines in practice. This paper discusses the general concept in oncology and presents an evaluation of a CDS system to support triple assessment (TA) in breast cancer care. Balanced-block crossover experiment and questionnaire study. One stop clinic for symptomatic breast patients. Twenty-four practising breast clinicians from United Kingdom National Health Service hospitals. A web-based CDS system. Clinicians made significantly more deviations from guideline recommendations without decision support (60 out of 120 errors without CDS; 16 out of 120 errors with CDS, P<0.001). Ignoring minor deviations, 16 potentially critical errors arose in the no-decision-support arm of the trial compared with just one (P=0.001) when decision support was available. Opinions of participating clinicians towards the CDS tool became more positive after they had used it (P<0.025). The use of decision support capabilities in TA may yield significant measurable benefits for quality and safety of patient care. This is an important option for improving compliance with evidence-based practice guidelines

Dengue Virus Capsid Protein Usurps Lipid Droplets for Viral Particle Formation

Dengue virus is responsible for the highest rates of disease and mortality among the members of the Flavivirus genus. Dengue epidemics are still occurring around the world, indicating an urgent need of prophylactic vaccines and antivirals. In recent years, a great deal has been learned about the mechanisms of dengue virus genome amplification. However, little is known about the process by which the capsid protein recruits the viral genome during encapsidation. Here, we found that the mature capsid protein in the cytoplasm of dengue virus infected cells accumulates on the surface of ER-derived organelles named lipid droplets. Mutagenesis analysis using infectious dengue virus clones has identified specific hydrophobic amino acids, located in the center of the capsid protein, as key elements for lipid droplet association. Substitutions of amino acid L50 or L54 in the capsid protein disrupted lipid droplet targeting and impaired viral particle formation. We also report that dengue virus infection increases the number of lipid droplets per cell, suggesting a link between lipid droplet metabolism and viral replication. In this regard, we found that pharmacological manipulation of the amount of lipid droplets in the cell can be a means to control dengue virus replication. In addition, we developed a novel genetic system to dissociate cis-acting RNA replication elements from the capsid coding sequence. Using this system, we found that mislocalization of a mutated capsid protein decreased viral RNA amplification. We propose that lipid droplets play multiple roles during the viral life cycle; they could sequester the viral capsid protein early during infection and provide a scaffold for genome encapsidation

NS3 protease from flavivirus as a target for designing antiviral inhibitors against dengue virus

The development of novel therapeutic agents is essential for combating the increasing number of cases of dengue fever in endemic countries and among a large number of travelers from non-endemic countries. The dengue virus has three structural proteins and seven non-structural (NS) proteins. NS3 is a multifunctional protein with an N-terminal protease domain (NS3pro) that is responsible for proteolytic processing of the viral polyprotein, and a C-terminal region that contains an RNA triphosphatase, RNA helicase and RNA-stimulated NTPase domain that are essential for RNA replication. The serine protease domain of NS3 plays a central role in the replicative cycle of dengue virus. This review discusses the recent structural and biological studies on the NS2B-NS3 protease-helicase and considers the prospects for the development of small molecules as antiviral drugs to target this fascinating, multifunctional protein

Pretreatment metabotype as a predictor of response to sertraline or placebo in depressed outpatients: a proof of concept

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the baseline metabolic profile (that is, metabotype) of a patient with major depressive disorder (MDD) would define how an individual will respond to treatment. Outpatients with MDD were randomly assigned to sertraline (up to 150 mg per day) (N=43) or placebo (N=46) in a double-blind 4-week trial. Baseline serum samples were profiled using the liquid chromatography electrochemical array; the output was digitized to create a ‘digital map' of the entire measurable response for a particular sample. Response was defined as ⩾50% reduction baseline to week 4 in the 17-item Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression total score. Models were built using the one-out method for cross-validation. Multivariate analyses showed that metabolic profiles partially separated responders and non-responders to sertraline or to placebo. For the sertraline models, the overall correct classification rate was 81% whereas it was 72% for the placebo models. Several pathways were implicated in separation of responders and non-responders on sertraline and on placebo including phenylalanine, tryptophan, purine and tocopherol. Dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, tocopherols and serotonin were common metabolites in separating responders and non-responders to both drug and placebo. Pretreatment metabotypes may predict which depressed patients will respond to acute treatment (4 weeks) with sertraline or placebo. Some pathways were informative for both treatments whereas other pathways were unique in predicting response to either sertraline or placebo. Metabolomics may inform the biochemical basis for the early efficacy of sertraline

A Scalable Architecture for Incremental Specification and Maintenance of Procedural and Declarative Clinical Decision-Support Knowledge

Clinical guidelines have been shown to improve the quality of medical care and to reduce its costs. However, most guidelines exist in a free-text representation and, without automation, are not sufficiently accessible to clinicians at the point of care. A prerequisite for automated guideline application is a machine-comprehensible representation of the guidelines. In this study, we designed and implemented a scalable architecture to support medical experts and knowledge engineers in specifying and maintaining the procedural and declarative aspects of clinical guideline knowledge, resulting in a machine comprehensible representation. The new framework significantly extends our previous work on the Digital electronic Guidelines Library (DeGeL) The current study designed and implemented a graphical framework for specification of declarative and procedural clinical knowledge, Gesher. We performed three different experiments to evaluate the functionality and usability of the major aspects of the new framework: Specification of procedural clinical knowledge, specification of declarative clinical knowledge, and exploration of a given clinical guideline. The subjects included clinicians and knowledge engineers (overall, 27 participants). The evaluations indicated high levels of completeness and correctness of the guideline specification process by both the clinicians and the knowledge engineers, although the best results, in the case of declarative-knowledge specification, were achieved by teams including a clinician and a knowledge engineer. The usability scores were high as well, although the clinicians’ assessment was significantly lower than the assessment of the knowledge engineers