Photovoltaic characterisation of GaAsBi/GaAs multiple quantum well devices

A series of strained GaAsBi/GaAs multiple quantum well diodes are characterised to assess the potential of GaAsBi for photovoltaic applications. The devices are compared with strained and strain-balanced InGaAs based devices. The dark currents of the GaAsBi based devices are around 20 times higher than those of the InGaAs based devices. The GaAsBi devices that have undergone significant strain relaxation have dark currents that are a further 10–20 times higher. Quantum efficiency measurements show the GaAsBi devices have a lower energy absorption edge and stronger absorption than the strained InGaAs devices. These measurements also indicate incomplete carrier extraction from the GaAsBi based devices at short circuit, despite the devices having a relatively low background doping. This is attributed to hole trapping within the quantum wells, due to the large valence band offset of GaAsBi

METC Combustion Research Facility

The objective of the Morgantown Energy Technology Center (METC) high pressure combustion facility is to provide a mid-scale facility for combustion and cleanup research to support DOE`s advanced gas turbine, pressurized, fluidized-bed combustion, and hot gas cleanup programs. The facility is intended to fill a gap between lab scale facilities typical of universities and large scale combustion/turbine test facilities typical of turbine manufacturers. The facility is now available to industry and university partners through cooperative programs with METC. Currently two combustion rigs are operating and one additional project is under construction for the facility. Space is available in the test cells for at least one additional test rig. A pressurized pulsed combustor began operating in July of 1993. The combustor will carry out pulsed combustion of natural gas at pressures up to 10 atmospheres. A high pressure steady flow rig is currently completely fabricated. The objective of this rig is to test novel, steady-flow, pressurized combustors that produce very low NO{sub x} and other emissions. An evaporation rig currently is in startup. This rig will test the concept of water injection in an externally fired cycle. The specific technical issue that the unit will address is evaporation rates of water droplets in high pressure flows

The LBDS Hercules sample of mJy radio sources at 1.4 GHz - II. Redshift distribution, radio luminosity function, and the high-redshift cut-off

{Abridged} A combination of spectroscopy and broadband photometric redshifts has been used to find the complete redshift distribution of the Hercules sample of millijansky radio sources. These data have been used to examine the evolution of the radio luminosity function (RLF) and its high-redshift cut-off. New redshifts have been measured for eleven sources, and a further ten upper limits are given. The total number of sources with known redshifts in the sample is now 47 (65%). We calculated broadband photometric redshifts for the remaining one-third of the sample. For the luminosity range probed by the present study (P_1.4 > 10^24.5 W/Hz/sr), we use the V/V_max test to show conclusively that there is a deficit of high-redshift (z > 2-2.5) objects. Comparison with the model RLFs of Dunlop & Peacock (1990) shows that our data can now exclude pure luminosity evolution. Two of the models of DP90, and the RLF deduced by direct binning of the data, both favour a luminosity dependence for the high-redshift cut-off, with lower-luminosity sources (P_1.4 \simeq 10^24 W/Hz/sr) in decline by z \simeq 1-1.5 while higher-luminosity sources (P_1.4 \simeq 10^{25-26} W/Hz/sr) decline in comoving number density beyond z \simeq 2-2.5.Comment: Revised version submitted to MNRAS. 16 pages, 12 figure

An Altered Immune Response, but Not Individual Cationic Antimicrobial Peptides, Is Associated with the Oral Attenuation of Ara4N-Deficient Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium in Mice

Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium) uses two-component regulatory systems (TCRS) to respond to stimuli in the local microenvironment. Upon infection, the Salmonella TCRSs PhoP-PhoQ (PhoPQ) and PmrA-PmrB (PmrAB) are activated by environmental signals in the intestinal lumen and within host cells. TCRS-mediated gene expression results in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) modification and cationic antimicrobial peptide resistance. The PmrA-regulated pmrHFIJKLM operon mediates 4-amino-4-deoxy-L-arabinose (Ara4N) production and attachment to the lipid A of LPS. A ΔpmrF S. Typhimurium strain cannot produce Ara4N, exhibits increased sensitivity to cationic antimicrobial peptide (CAMP)-mediated killing, and attenuated virulence in mice upon oral infection. CAMPs are predicted to play a role in elimination of Salmonella, and may activate PhoPQ and PmrAB in vivo, which could increase bacterial resistance to host defenses. Competition experiments between wild type (WT) and ΔpmrF mutant strains of S. Typhimurium indicated that selection against this mutant first occurs within the intestinal lumen early during infection. However, CRAMP and active cryptdins alone are not responsible for elimination of Ara4N-deficient bacteria in vivo. Investigation into the early immune response to ΔpmrF showed that it differed slightly from the early immune response to WT S. Typhimurium. Further investigation into the early immune response to infection of Peyer's patches suggests a role for IL-13 in the attenution of the ΔpmrF mutant strain. Thus, prominent CAMPs present in the mouse intestine are not responsible for the selection against the ΔpmrF strain in this location, but limited alterations in innate immune induction were observed that affect bacterial survival and virulence

Identifying transcriptional profiles and evaluating prognostic biomarkers of HIV-associated diffuse large B-cell lymphoma from Malawi

Lymphoma incidence in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is increasing due to HIV and population aging. Diffuse Large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), the most common lymphoma in SSA and worldwide, is highly associated with HIV, but molecular studies of HIV-associated DLBCL are scarce globally. We describe profiling of DLBCL from Malawi, aiming to elucidate tumor biology and identify clinically meaningful biomarkers specifically for SSA. Between June 1, 2013 and June 1, 2016, 59 cases of DLBCL (32 HIV+/27 HIV−) enrolled in the Kamuzu Central Hospital Lymphoma Study were characterized, of which 54 (92%) were negative for Epstein–Barr virus. Gene expression profiling (GEP) by whole transcriptome sequencing was performed on the first 36 cases (22 HIV+/14 HIV−). Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and GEP results were compared with published data and correlated to clinical outcome and pathologic features. Unsupervised clustering strongly segregated DLBCL by HIV status (p = 0.0003, Chi-squared test), indicating a marked contribution of HIV to expression phenotype. Pathway analysis identified that HIV-associated tumors were enriched in hypoxia, oxidative stress, and metabolism related gene expression patterns. Cell-of-origin subtype, determined by sequencing and IHC, did not associate with differences in overall survival (OS), while Ki-67 proliferation index ≥80% was associated with inferior OS in HIV+ DLBCL only (p = 0.03) and cMYC/BCL2 co-expression by IHC was negatively prognostic across the entire cohort (p = 0.01). This study provides among the first molecular characterizations of DLBCL from SSA, demonstrates marked gene expression differences by HIV status, and identifies genomic and immunophenotypic characteristics that can inform future basic and clinical investigations

Women, men and coronary heart disease: a review of the qualitative literature

Aim. This paper presents a review of the qualitative literature which examines the experiences of patients with coronary heart disease. The paper also assesses whether the experiences of both female and male patients are reflected in the literature and summarizes key themes. Background. Understanding patients' experiences of their illness is important for coronary heart disease prevention and education. Qualitative methods are particularly suited to eliciting patients' detailed understandings and perceptions of illness. As much previous research has been 'gender neutral', this review pays particular attention to gender. Methods. Published papers from 60 qualitative studies were identified for the review through searches in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PREMEDLINE, PsychINFO, Social Sciences Citation Index and Web of Science using keywords related to coronary heart disease. Findings. Early qualitative studies of patients with coronary heart disease were conducted almost exclusively with men, and tended to generalize from 'male' experience to 'human' experience. By the late 1990s this pattern had changed, with the majority of studies including women and many being conducted with solely female samples. However, many studies that include both male and female coronary heart disease patients still do not have a specific gender focus. Key themes in the literature include interpreting symptoms and seeking help, belief about coronary 'candidates' and relationships with health professionals. The influence of social roles is important: many female patients have difficulties reconciling family responsibilities and medical advice, while male patients worry about being absent from work. Conclusions. There is a need for studies that compare the experiences of men and women. There is also an urgent need for work that takes masculinity and gender roles into account when exploring the experiences of men with coronary heart disease

Absence of First-order Transition and Tri-critical Point in the Dynamic Phase Diagram of a Spatially Extended Bistable System in an Oscillating Field

It has been well established that spatially extended, bistable systems that are driven by an oscillating field exhibit a nonequilibrium dynamic phase transition (DPT). The DPT occurs when the field frequency is on the order of the inverse of an intrinsic lifetime associated with the transitions between the two stable states in a static field of the same magnitude as the amplitude of the oscillating field. The DPT is continuous and belongs to the same universality class as the equilibrium phase transition of the Ising model in zero field [G. Korniss et al., Phys. Rev. E 63, 016120 (2001); H. Fujisaka et al., Phys. Rev. E 63, 036109 (2001)]. However, it has previously been claimed that the DPT becomes discontinuous at temperatures below a tricritical point [M. Acharyya, Phys. Rev. E 59, 218 (1999)]. This claim was based on observations in dynamic Monte Carlo simulations of a multipeaked probability density for the dynamic order parameter and negative values of the fourth-order cumulant ratio. Both phenomena can be characteristic of discontinuous phase transitions. Here we use classical nucleation theory for the decay of metastable phases, together with data from large-scale dynamic Monte Carlo simulations of a two-dimensional kinetic Ising ferromagnet, to show that these observations in this case are merely finite-size effects. For sufficiently small systems and low temperatures, the continuous DPT is replaced, not by a discontinuous phase transition, but by a crossover to stochastic resonance. In the infinite-system limit the stochastic-resonance regime vanishes, and the continuous DPT should persist for all nonzero temperatures

Demagnetization via Nucleation of the Nonequilibrium Metastable Phase in a Model of Disorder

We study both analytically and numerically metastability and nucleation in a two-dimensional nonequilibrium Ising ferromagnet. Canonical equilibrium is dynamically impeded by a weak random perturbation which models homogeneous disorder of undetermined source. We present a simple theoretical description, in perfect agreement with Monte Carlo simulations, assuming that the decay of the nonequilibrium metastable state is due, as in equilibrium, to the competition between the surface and the bulk. This suggests one to accept a nonequilibrium "free-energy" at a mesoscopic/cluster level, and it ensues a nonequilibrium "surface tension" with some peculiar low-T behavior. We illustrate the occurrence of intriguing nonequilibrium phenomena, including: (i) Noise-enhanced stabilization of nonequilibrium metastable states; (ii) reentrance of the limit of metastability under strong nonequilibrium conditions; and (iii) resonant propagation of domain walls. The cooperative behavior of our system may also be understood in terms of a Langevin equation with additive and multiplicative noises. We also studied metastability in the case of open boundaries as it may correspond to a magnetic nanoparticle. We then observe burst-like relaxation at low T, triggered by the additional surface randomness, with scale-free avalanches which closely resemble the type of relaxation reported for many complex systems. We show that this results from the superposition of many demagnetization events, each with a well- defined scale which is determined by the curvature of the domain wall at which it originates. This is an example of (apparent) scale invariance in a nonequilibrium setting which is not to be associated with any familiar kind of criticality.Comment: 26 pages, 22 figure

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in individuals with pre-existing mental illness

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected mental health, but most studies have been conducted in the general population. AIMS: To identify factors associated with mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with pre-existing mental illness. METHOD: Participants (N = 2869, 78% women, ages 18–94 years) from a UK cohort (the National Centre for Mental Health) with a history of mental illness completed a cross-sectional online survey in June to August 2020. Mental health assessments were the GAD-7 (anxiety), PHQ-9 (depression) and WHO-5 (well-being) questionnaires, and a self-report question on whether their mental health had changed during the pandemic. Regressions examined associations between mental health outcomes and hypothesised risk factors. Secondary analyses examined associations between specific mental health diagnoses and mental health. RESULTS: A total of 60% of participants reported that mental health had worsened during the pandemic. Younger age, difficulty accessing mental health services, low income, income affected by COVID-19, worry about COVID-19, reduced sleep and increased alcohol/drug use were associated with increased depression and anxiety symptoms and reduced well-being. Feeling socially supported by friends/family/services was associated with better mental health and well-being. Participants with a history of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or eating disorder were more likely to report that mental health had worsened during the pandemic than individuals without a history of these diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS: We identified factors associated with worse mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in individuals with pre-existing mental illness, in addition to specific groups potentially at elevated risk of poor mental health during the pandemic