Mindful Mustangs: A Mindful Meditation App for Cal Poly SLO

This report discusses the creation and research behind a new mindfulness meditation application called Mindful Mustangs, which is created for the students of Cal Poly SLO. The goal of this mobile website is to use the various techniques used in mindful meditation to reduce the stress and anxiety that college students regularly face. With the onset of iOS and Android applications, similar health and behavioral applications are on the rise. The increase of these applications calls for a certain type of design and a robust analysis must be done to ensure the psychological health of the user. Mindfulness applications such as Stop, Breathe & Think and Calm have adopted different information architectures and aesthetics that are proven to achieve lower anxiety levels in the user. Understanding the features that contribute to the positive effects of these applications helped create Mindful Mustangs and can help develop more powerful psychological and behavioral applications in the future

Influence of deposition temperature of thermal ALD deposited Al2O3 films on silicon surface passivation

The effect of deposition temperature (T-dep) and subsequent annealing time (t(anl)) of atomic layer deposited aluminum oxide (Al2O3) films on silicon surface passivation (in terms of surface recombination velocity, SRV) is investigated. The pristine samples (as-deposited) show presence of positive fixed charges, Q(F). The interface defect density (D-it) decreases with increase in T-dep which further decreases with tanl up to 100s. An effective surface passivation (SRV= 200 degrees C. The present investigation suggests that low thermal budget processing provides the same quality of passivation as realized by high thermal budget process (tanl between 10 to 30 min)

Effect of low thermal budget annealing on surface passivation of silicon by ALD based aluminum oxide films

Thermal ALD deposited Al2O3 films on silicon show a marked difference in surface passivation quality as a function of annealing time (using a rapid thermal process). An effective and quality passivation is realized in short anneal duration (similar to 100 s) in nitrogen ambient which is reflected in the low surface recombination velocity (SRV <10 cm s(-1)). The deduced values are close to the best reported SRV obtained by the high thermal budget process (with annealing time between 10-30 min), conventionally used for improved surface passivation. Both as-deposited and low thermal budget annealed films show the presence of positive fixed charges and this is never been reported in the literature before. The role of field and chemical passivation is investigated in terms of fixed charge and interface defect densities. Further, the importance of the annealing step sequence in the MIS structure fabrication protocol is also investigated from the view point of its effect on the nature of fixed charges

Silicon surface passivation using thin HfO2 films by atomic layer deposition

Hafnium oxide (HfO2) is a potential material for equivalent oxide thickness (EDT) scaling in microelectronics; however, its surface passivation properties particularly on silicon are not well explored. This paper reports investigation on passivation properties of thermally deposited thin HfO2 films by atomic layer deposition system (ALD) on silicon surface. As-deposited pristine film (similar to 8 nm) shows better passivation with <100 cm/s surface recombination velocity (SRV) vis-a-vis thicker films. Further improvement in passivation quality is achieved with annealing at 400 degrees C for 10 min where the SRV reduces to similar to 20 cm/s. Conductance measurements show that the interface defect density (D-it) increases with film thickness whereas its value decreases after annealing. XRR data corroborate with the observations made by FTIR and SRV data

Chromosomal distribution of predicted miRNA precursors of tomato miRNAs.

<p>The precursors of conserved (MIR), variants of conserved (varMIR) and novel (MIRNA) miRNAs were mapped onto tomato chromosomes using sequenced based map (Mb units) that shows the positions of Kazusa and SolCAP markers on the genome. The loci of pre-miRNAs of conserved and variants of conserved miRNAs are highlighted in light color and the loci of pre-miRNAs of novel miRNAs are highlighted in dark colour.</p

Different stages of disease and RKN development observed in infected tomato roots of susceptible line through acid fuchsin staining.

<p><b>(A)</b> Invasion of J2s/ initiation of feeding sites (Stage 1). <b>(B)</b> Parasitic J2s/ formation of feeding sites (Stage 2). <b>(C)</b> Feeding J2s and J3s/ expansion of feeding sites (Stage 3). <b>(D)</b> J4s/ maintenance of feeding sites (Stage 4). <b>(E)</b> J4s and females/ maintenance of feeding sites (Stage 5).</p

Relative expression analysis of selected conserved and novel tomato miRNAs and their targets through qRT-PCR at four stages of disease development during tomato-RKN susceptible interaction.

<p>The correlation in expression profile was deciphered between conserved miRNAs including, miR156(i), miR164(i), miR159(i), miR168(i) and miR396(i) and their target genes, <i>SBP</i>, <i>NAC</i>, <i>GAMYB-like</i> (<i>MYB33</i> and <i>MYB65</i>), <i>AGO1</i> and <i>GRF1</i>, respectively. The correlation in expression profile of novel miRNA, Sly_miRNA996 with its target, <i>MYB-like</i> transcription factor gene was also determined. For qRT-PCR analysis, two technical replicates for each of three biological replicates were used. Fold change was calculated through delta delta Ct method that represents the change in expression level of miRNA and target gene in the infected sample relative to the uninfected control. The fold change of uninfected sample of each stage was taken as 1 and presented with solid line. The data is presented as the mean of three biological replicates ±standard error of the mean. S1-Stage 1, S2-Stage 2, S3-Stage 3, S5-Stage 5, UI-Uninfected sample, I-Infected sample.</p

Genome-wide identification and characterization of miRNAome from tomato (<i>Solanum lycopersicum</i>) roots and root-knot nematode (<i>Meloidogyne incognita</i>) during susceptible interaction

<div><p>Root-knot nematodes (RKNs, <i>Meloidogyne</i> spp.) are the most damaging plant parasites causing severe losses to crop production. The present study reports genome-wide identification and characterization of both tomato and RKN miRNAs simultaneously from RKN-infected susceptible tomato roots using high-throughput sequencing technique. RNAseq data from 11 small RNA libraries derived from 5 disease development stages identified 281 novel miRNAs of tomato in addition to 52 conserved and 4 variants of conserved miRNAs. Additionally, the same set of RNAseq data identified 38 conserved and 290 novel RKN miRNAs. Both tomato and RKN miRNAs showed differential expression at 5 stages of disease development based on digital expression profiles. In tomato, further validation through qRT-PCR confirmed that majority of miRNAs were significantly upregulated during susceptible response whereas downregulated during resistance response. The predicted targets of 8 conserved and 1 novel miRNAs were validated through 5’RLM-RACE. A negative correlation between expression profiles of a few conserved miRNAs (miR156, miR159, miR164 and miR396) and their targets (<i>SBP</i>, <i>GAMYB-like</i>, <i>NAC</i> and <i>GRF</i>1 transcription factor) was confirmed. A novel Sly_miRNA996 also showed a negative correlation with its target <i>MYB-like</i> transcription factor. These results indicate that the conserved and novel tomato miRNAs are involved in regulating developmental changes in host root during RKN infection. In RKN, the targets of conserved miRNAs were also predicted and a few of their predicted target genes are known to be involved in nematode parasitism. Further, the potential roles of both tomato and RKN miRNAs have been discussed.</p></div

GO analysis of targets of conserved, variants of conserved and novel tomato miRNAs using singular enrichment analysis tool (SEA) of AgriGO toolkit.

<p>(<b>A)</b> The percentage of genes mapped under different GO terms is represented through a bar graph. Blue bars indicate percentage of enriched miRNA target genes in different GO terms and green bars indicate percentage of total annotated tomato genes mapping in different GO terms. (<b>B)</b> Enriched GO terms in molecular function category are represented in hierarchical tree graph.</p