Effects of cultivation years on effective constituent content of Fritillaria pallidiflora Schernk

Fritillaria pallidiflora Schrenk has been treasured in traditional classic medicine as an antitussive, antiasthmatic and expectorant for hundreds of years. With gradually decreasing wild F. pallidiflora resources, the herb can no longer satisfy the demand. Artificial cultivation is one of the most effective ways to solve the contradiction between supply and demand in the medicinal material market. During the growth of Rhizomes medicinal plants, root biomass and active ingredient content showed dynamic accumulated variation with increasing cultivation years. Up to now, hardly any attempts have been made to investigate the relationship between quality and cultivation years of F. pallidiflora. Therefore, in this paper, we determined the optimum harvesting time by comparing biomass and biological characteristics of F. pallidiflora at different cultivation times. High-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection and phenol-sulfuric acid visible spectrophotometry was performed to determine imperialine and polysaccharide content of F. pallidiflora bulbs. From year 1 to 6 of cultivation, we observed an upward trend in plant height, diameter and dry weight of F. pallidiflora, while water content decreased. Plant height and dry weight increased remarkably during the fourth year of cultivation. The content of imperialine and polysaccharide of F. pallidiflora bulbs, on the other hand, showed an upward trend from year 1 to 3, after which it decreased from year 3 to 6. By comparing plant growth, biomass development and the accumulation of imperialine and polysaccharide, the best harvesting time of F. pallidiflora was determined to be after 4 years of cultivation. Our results showed that it is possible to establish a safe, effective, stable and controllable production process, which could play an important role in achieving sustainable utilization of F. pallidiflora resources.Fritillaria pallidiflora Schrenk has been treasured in traditional classic medicine as an antitussive, antiasthmatic and expectorant for hundreds of years. With gradually decreasing wild F. pallidiflora resources, the herb can no longer satisfy the demand. Artificial cultivation is one of the most effective ways to solve the contradiction between supply and demand in the medicinal material market. During the growth of Rhizomes medicinal plants, root biomass and active ingredient content showed dynamic accumulated variation with increasing cultivation years. Up to now, hardly any attempts have been made to investigate the relationship between quality and cultivation years of F. pallidiflora. Therefore, in this paper, we determined the optimum harvesting time by comparing biomass and biological characteristics of F. pallidiflora at different cultivation times. High-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detection and phenol-sulfuric acid visible spectrophotometry was performed to determine imperialine and polysaccharide content of F. pallidiflora bulbs. From year 1 to 6 of cultivation, we observed an upward trend in plant height, diameter and dry weight of F. pallidiflora, while water content decreased. Plant height and dry weight increased remarkably during the fourth year of cultivation. The content of imperialine and polysaccharide of F. pallidiflora bulbs, on the other hand, showed an upward trend from year 1 to 3, after which it decreased from year 3 to 6. By comparing plant growth, biomass development and the accumulation of imperialine and polysaccharide, the best harvesting time of F. pallidiflora was determined to be after 4 years of cultivation. Our results showed that it is possible to establish a safe, effective, stable and controllable production process, which could play an important role in achieving sustainable utilization of F. pallidiflora resources

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Electric Vehicle Traction Drive Using Si/SiC Hybrid Switches

The parallel connection of a Silicon (Si)-based IGBT and a Silicon Carbide (SiC)-based MOSFET forming a so called hybrid switch can be used to capitalize on the advantageous features of both semiconductor and materials technologies. In this thesis, a hybrid switch-based inverter designed for the application of Electric Vehicle (EV) traction drive is compared to the conventional inverter assembled with Si-based IGBTs, and SiC-based MOSFETs. According to different standardized driving cycles, Electric Vehicles operate in low partial load for a considerable amount of the time. Therefore, in this application, semiconductor conduction losses can be considerably reduced when unipolar switches such as MOSFETs are used. Collectively, this work shows that the hybrid switch configuration constitutes a good compromise between efficiency and cost when compared to a solution implementing only Si-based IGBT or solely SiC-based MOSFETs

Designing mobile inquiry-based learning activities: Learners’ agency and technological affordances

Recent discourse and research studies on mobile learning showed increasing awareness of the complexity of mobile learning in the digital age. Notwithstanding mobile devices, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies have greatly empowered learners and educators to overcome the constraints of conventional education, such as time, space, location and to learn on the move. However, balancing technological dependency and learner autonomy remains an area of contention in designing meaningful mobile learning activities. Hence, this interactive and participatory workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners working on this issue to share their experience and to engage in facilitated activities and discussions on designing mobile learning activities that effectively balance learners’ agency with mobile technology. Additionally, this workshop also provides a platform for unsolved challenges and future research directions on smart technology and smart learning spaces in the context of mobile learning, laying the groundwork for joint research efforts.Web Information System

Destillatieve scheiding van freon-11 en freon-12

DelftChemTechApplied Science

Study on Reverse Recovery of a P-pillar Tunable Super-Junction MOSFET*

In this paper, a novel bubble-shift super junction (SJ) MOSFET structure is proposed, and its main static electrical parameters and reverse recovery characteristics are simulated by TCAD software tool. By designing the P-pillar ion implantation windows with a certain offset, the bubble-shift SJ-MOSFET contains a curved pillar region in the upper half of the P-pillar. In the reverse recovery test of the proposed bubble-shift SJ-MOSFET, the peak reverse recovery current (I rrm ) is reduced from 16.04 A to 15.21 A, and the current drop rate (di/dt) is reduced from 1587 A/μs to 815 A/μs. Correspondingly, the proposed device achieves a better reverse recovery characteristic while sacrificing a small fraction of the drain-source breakdown voltage (BV) and drain-source special on-resistance (R on,sp ). Compared with the BV of 700 V and the R on,sp of 9 mΩ·cm 2 of the benchmark SJ-MOSFET. The proposed device has a BV of 650 V and a R on,sp of 12.4 mΩ·cm 2 . Mechanistically, the non-uniform depletion of the curved P-pillar reduces the carrier extraction rate, thereby prolonging the reverse current drop time (t f ) and increasing the softness factor (S) of the bubble-shift SJ-MOSFET.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Bio-ElectronicsElectronic Components, Technology and Material

Research on local deformation property of asphalt mixture using digital image correlation

Failure behavior of asphalt mixture is the process of local deformation accumulation, therefore, local deformation investigation is the base work of failure behavior. Digital image correlation (DIC) method is an optical method which can calculate the local deformation in the failure process. This paper aims to evaluate the precision, select the optimal test parameters for DIC deformation measurement based on natural speckle image, and investigate the local deformation characteristic in the failure process for different mixtures. The results show the image quality of AC with smaller normal maximum aggregate size (NMAS) is better for DIC deformation calculation, the relative deviation of virtual translation and shear test can satisfy the precision requirement, the optimal subset size is 31. Based on the strain distribution, the optimal local deformation measure length for indirect tensile test is set as 50 mm, the critical steady strain is proposed based on R2 obtained by the least squares fitting method, according to local deformation characteristic, the results show SMA can bear more deformation before unstable deformation stage and failure.Pavement Engineerin

A TCAD Simulation Study on the Short-circuit Performance of 650V P-pillar Offset Super-junction MOSFET

The limitation of Silicon based power MOSFET was broken by the super-junction (SJ) structure, which can provide lower specific on-resistance and higher breakdown voltage compared with the conventional power MOSFET structure. Multi-epitaxial and multi-ion-implant technology, as a mature manufacturing process of the SJ structure, has been widely used in the field of SJ-MOSFET. Therefore, this process is applied to construct the cell structure of 650V SJ-MOSFET in our study. Based on practical application, high current caused by unexpected short circuit will induce an increasing of the internal temperature of SJ-MOSFET, which leads to an irreversible damage in the SJ-MOSFET devices. However, the short-circuit robustness of SJ-MOSFET is still unstable, and the structure needs to be further improved. In our study, the electrical performance of a 650V SJ-MOSFET with offset P-pillar is theoretically investigated by means of technology computer aided design (TCAD) when the SJ-MOSFET is short circuited. The results clearly show that the optimized SJ-MOSFET can withstand the source-drain voltage of 400V for at least 10 μs in the case of the short-circuit. The thermal distribution and peak temperature of the cell structure of SJ-MOSFET are also simulated to assist in the analysis of the short circuit capable of the device. In addition, the hole current density distribution of two SJ-MOSFETs is considered to gain insight into the effect of P-pillar parameters on the short-circuit robustness. The result represents that the structure with offset P-pillar can effectively improve the short-circuit capability.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Bio-ElectronicsElectronic Components, Technology and Material

Hydrogenated Boron Phosphide with the excellent tunability of electronic properties and Current-Voltage responses

Combining the first principles calculations and the non-equilibrium Green’s function formalisms, we decipher the structural, electronic, and transport properties of boron phosphide (BP) with hydrogenation. Hydrogenated BP monolayer is an indirect semiconductor with a wide-bandgap of 3.76 eV that is favorable in power devices. We find that the electronic properties are dependent of the stacking orders and the binding strength of the AA-, AB-, and AE-stacked patterns are strongest in the investigated configurations. Under the external E-field, the bandgaps of hydrogenated BP bilayer show a quasi-parabolic function and a feature of the semiconductor-metallic transition. Besides, when we apply a tensile strain on hydrogenated BP bilayer, its bandgap linearly decreases with the increasing of the strain strength along the zigzag and armchair directions. The strain energies further confirm that hydrogenated BP has an excellent characteristic of elastic deformation, being independent of the stacking orders and strain orientation. The transport calculations exhibit various responses to the different two-probe configurations, which indicates that hydrogenated BP possesses the feature of transmission anisotropy. Owing to the nontrivial tunability and transport feature, the hydrogenated BP materials may have tremendous prospects to be applied in micro-/nano-devices with high consumption.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Electronic Components, Technology and Material

High-Voltage and High-Current IGBT Press-pack Module for Power Grid

On the basis of the development and application requirements of flexible DC transmission techniques, a 1 kA/10 kV half-bridge IGBT press-pack module is studied. The module is composed of three subunits in series, and each subunit consists of IGBT chips in parallel. In order to solve the problem of chips failure caused by non-uniform rigid-contacting pressure in the press-pack modules, the elastic-contacting structure is designed to ensure excellent electrical connection between chips and contact terminal. During the operating conditions, the heat generated by IGBT chips can induce the increasing of internal temperature of the module, affecting the reliability of the module. A cooling structure is introduced between the subunits to solve the heat dissipation problem of the module. In addition, the thermal analysis of subunit and the cooling structure is performed by using the finite element simulation, and the chip layout and water-cooling scheme are optimized. The testing of electrical parameters of the IGBT module is also conducted.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Electronic Components, Technology and MaterialsBio-Electronic