Design of a Broadband Amplifier for High Speed Applications

This paper provides comprehensive insight into the design approach followed for an amplifier dedicated to high speed base band signals. To demonstrate the methodology, an amplifier consisting of nine PHEMT cascode cells within a distributed amplifier topology was designed. The resulting frequency response is 40 GHz at the 3-dB point, and the output voltage for a 43 Gbps eye diagram is 7.3 Vpp at the chip terminal

Are nonwoven synthetic pollination bags a better choice for sorghum breeding?

This work investigated the effects of seven pollination bag treatments on three varieties of sorghum for: grain loss to birds; total weight of five panicles (g); total grain weight of five panicles (g); average grain weight per panicle (g); germination per cent; and occurrence of grain mold during 2016. Varieties were: 1167048 hybrid (brown seeded); BR007B (red seeded); and P9401 (white seeded). The bag treatments were: 1. No bagging; 2. Kraft paper; 3. Kraft paper + plastic bag screen; 4 Used duraweb® SG1; 5. Used duraweb® SG2; 6. New duraweb® SG1; 7. New duraweld® SG2. High bird pressure resulted in 100% seed loss on uncovered panicles and 75% under Kraft paper pollination bags. Birds preferred white seeded P9401, which led to no seed recovery under Kraft paper bags. There was virtually no bird damage with all other pollination bags. For panicle and grain yields the varieties performed in the order 1167048>BR007B>P9401. Unprotected panicles and paper bag treatments had the lowest yields. Panicles covered with the new synthetic bags exhibited 195 to 652% higher yields compared to Kraft paper bags. Varieties x bag type interactions were not important as they contributed 4 to 6% to the total sum of squares for yield traits. Germination test under normal and stress conditions showed no significant adverse effect of bag treatments on seed health. Reused bags performed as well as new bags for all of these traits. Varieties differed significantly for the occurrence of five grain mold pathogens, with highest occurrence of Alternaria, up to 40%, on 1167048 hybrid. Of the five pathogens, bag types differed significantly for Phoma with the highest occurrence of 9% on re-used duraweb®SG2 bags. Thus bags require disinfecting and cleaning before re-use. It is concluded that nonwoven synthetic bags are a better choice than the Kraft paper pollination bags for increasing the grain yield and virtually eliminating the bird damage in sorghum

Optical injection and terahertz detection of the macroscopic Berry curvature

We propose an experimental scheme to probe the Berry curvature of solids. Our method is sensitive to arbitrary regions of the Brillouin zone, and employs only basic optical and terahertz techniques to yield a background free signal. Using semiconductor quantum wells as a prototypical system, we discuss how to inject Berry curvature macroscopically, and probe it in a way that provides information about the underlying microscopic Berry curvature.Comment: 4 pages, accepted in Physical Review Letter

Radon/helium studies for earthquake prediction in N-W Himalaya

The great Himalayan orogenic belt is one of the most active intra-continental regions in the world where a dozen earthquakes exceeding 7.5M occurred in the past from 1897 through 1950. Radon monitoring started in the Kangra valley, Himachal Pradesh in 1989 under the Himalayan Seismicity Programme of the Goverment of India. Six stations were set up along the main boundary fault (MBF) of N-W Himalaya. Radon monitoring is carried out using three techniques, viz., track etch technique, emanometry and alpha-logger system in both soil-gas and groundwater. Radon anomalies are correlated with microseismic activity in the N-W Himalaya. The correlation index varies for different stations and there is no one-to-one correspondence between radon anomalies and seismic events. The Uttarkashi (Ms47.0) and Chamba earthquakes (Ms45.1) are postdicted using radon anomalies which occurred in soil-gas and groundwater, simultaneously. Currently, we are using multisensor probes for monitoring of radon and meteorological parameters simultaneously in the study area. Helium is being monitored along with radon at Palampur in soil-gas and in thermal springs in the Kullu and Parbati valleys of Himachal Pradesh. The He/Rn ratio will be used as a predictive tool for earthquakes

Additive Equivalence in Turbulent Drag Reduction by Flexible and Rodlike Polymers

We address the "Additive Equivalence" discovered by Virk and coworkers: drag reduction affected by flexible and rigid rodlike polymers added to turbulent wall-bounded flows is limited from above by a very similar Maximum Drag Reduction (MDR) asymptote. Considering the equations of motion of rodlike polymers in wall-bounded turbulent ensembles, we show that although the microscopic mechanism of attaining the MDR is very different, the macroscopic theory is isomorphic, rationalizing the interesting experimental observations.Comment: 8 pages, PRE, submitte

Study of optical band gap and carbon cluster sizes formed in 100 MeV Si8+ and 145 MeV Ne6+ ions irradiated polypropylene polymer

A wide variety of material modifications in polymers have been studied by using ion irradiation techniques. Extensive research has focused on to Swift Heavy Ions (MeV's energy), probably because of good controllability and the large penetration length in polymers. High energy ion irradiation tends to damage polymers significantly by electronic excitation and ionization. It may result into the creation of latent tracks and can also cause formation of radicals such as ablation, sputtering, chain scission and intermolecular cross-linking, creation of triple bonds and unsaturated bonds and loss volatile fragments. Polypropylene polymer films of thickness 50 μm were irradiated to the fluences of 1 × 1010, 3 × 1010, 1 × 1011, 3 × 1011, 6 × 1011 and 1 × 1012 ions/cm2 with Si8+ ions of 100 MeV energy from Pelletron accelerator at Inter University Accelerator Centre (IUAC), New Delhi and Ne6+ ions of 145 MeV to the fluences of 108, 1010, 1011, 1012 and 1013 ions/cm3 from Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata. Optical modifications were characterized by UV towards the red end of the spectrum with the increase of the fluence. Value of optical band gap Eg shows a decreasing trend with ion fluence irradiated with both kinds of ions. Cluster size N, the number of carbon atoms per conjugation length increases with increasing ion dose. Cluster size also increases with the increase of electronic stopping power.Rajesh Kumar1*, S Asad Ali1, A. H. Naqvi1, H. S. Virk2, Udayan De3, D K Avasthi4 and Rajendra Prasad1 1Department of Applied Physics, Z. H. College of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202 002, Uttar Pradesh, India 2360 Sector-71, SAS Nagar (Mohali), Chandigarh-160 071, Punjab, India 3Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, 1/AF, Bidhan Nagar, Kolkata-700 064, India 4Inter-University Accelerator Centre, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi-110 067, India E-mail : [email protected] of Applied Physics, Z. H. College of Engineering & Technology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh-202 002, Uttar Pradesh, India 2360 Sector-71, SAS Nagar (Mohali), Chandigarh-160 071, Punjab, India Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, 1/AF, Bidhan Nagar, Kolkata-700 064, India Inter-University Accelerator Centre, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi-110 067, Indi

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection outcome using ejaculated sperm and retrieved sperm in azoospermic men.

Introduction:We aimed to determine pregnancy and miscarriage rates following intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) cycles using retrieved epididymal and testicular sperm in azoospermic men and ejaculated sperm in oligospermic and normospermic men. Materials AndMethods: This retrospective study was carried out on 517 couples who underwent ICSI. They included 96 couples with azoospermia and 421 with oligospermia or normal sperm count in the male partner. Of the men with azoospermia, 69 underwent percutaneous epididymal aspiration (PESA) and 47 underwent testicular sperm extraction (TESE). In the 421 men with oligospermia or normal sperm count, ejaculated sperm was used for ICSI. The differences in the outcomes of ICSI using PESA or TESE and ejaculated sperm were evaluated. The main outcome measures were pregnancy and miscarriage rates.Results: No significant differences were seen in pregnancy and miscarriage rates with surgically retrieved and ejaculated sperm. The pregnancy rates (including frozen embryo transfer) were 43.5%, 36.2%, and 41.4% in couples with PESA, TESE, and ejaculated sperm, respectively (P = .93). The miscarriage rates were 16.7%, 23.5%, and 12.1%, respectively (P = .37).Conclusion: Intracytoplasmic sperm injection in combination with PESA and TESE is an effective method and can successfully be performed to treat men with azoospermia. The outcomes with these procedures are comparable to ICSI using ejaculated sperm

Giant ambipolar Rashba effect in a semiconductor: BiTeI

We observe a giant spin-orbit splitting in bulk and surface states of the non-centrosymmetric semiconductor BiTeI. We show that the Fermi level can be placed in the valence or in the conduction band by controlling the surface termination. In both cases it intersects spin-polarized bands, in the corresponding surface depletion and accumulation layers. The momentum splitting of these bands is not affected by adsorbate-induced changes in the surface potential. These findings demonstrate that two properties crucial for enabling semiconductor-based spin electronics -- a large, robust spin splitting and ambipolar conduction -- are present in this material.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

The DReaM corpus: A multilingual annotated corpus of grammars for the world’s languages

There exist as many as 7000 natural languages in the world, and a huge number of documents describing those languages have been produced over the years. Most of those documents are in paper format. Any attempts to use modern computational techniques and tools to process those documents will require them to be digitized first. In this paper, we report a multilingual digitized version of thousands of such documents searchable through some well-established corpus infrastructures. The corpus is annotated with various meta, word, and text level attributes to make searching and analysis easier and more useful.NWO335-54-102Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic