Thermal transfer for flat‐panel‐display manufacturing

Abstract— Photolithography is currently the predominant patterning method in the flat‐panel‐display (FPD) industry. Thermal lithography is a novel approach offering superior process control, a completely dry process, and considerable cost savings. Thermal imaging is now the dominant imaging method in computer‐to‐plate applications in the printing industry, with over 6000 installations world‐wide. Two applications, in which this technology could be applied in the FPD industry, will be discussed in detail: color filters for liquid‐crystal displays (LCDs) and barrier ribs for LCDs and organic light‐emitting‐diode (OLED) displays.     

Context,Computation, and Optimal ROC Performance in Hierarchical Models

It is widely recognized that human vision relies on contextual information, typically arising from each of many levels of analysis. Local gradient information, otherwise ambiguous, is seen as part of a smooth contour or sharp angle in the context of an object’s boundary or corner. A stroke or degraded letter, unreadable by itself, contributes to the perception of a familiar word in the context of the surrounding strokes and letters. The iconic Dalmatian dog stays invisible until a multitude of clues about body parts and posture, and figure and ground, are coherently integrated. Context is always based on knowledge about the composition of parts that make up a whole, as in the arrangement of strokes that make up a letter, the arrangement of body parts that make up an animal, or the poses and postures of individuals that make up a mob. From this point of view, the hierarchy of contextual information available to an observer derives from the compositional nature of the world being observed. We will formulate this combinatorial viewpoint in terms of probability distributions and examine the computational implications. Whereas optimal recognition performance in this formulation is NP-complete, we will give mathematical and experimental evidence that a properly orchestrated computational algorithm can achieve nearly optimal recognition within a feasible number of operations. We will interpret the notions of bottom-up and top-down processing as steps in the staging of one such orchestration.     

Towards the definition of pathogenic microbe

Identification and typing of spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms have become major objectives over the past decade in microbiology. In food, strain typing is necessary to ensure food safety and for linking cases of foodborne infections to suspected items. Recent advances in molecular biology have resulted in the development of numerous DNA-based methods for discrimination among bacterial strains. Here, we present the use of Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR, or Microsatellites) for bacterial typing. SSRs are a class of short DNA sequence motifs that are tandemly repeated at a specific locus. Computer-based screen of the complete genomic DNA sequences of various prokaryotes showed the existence of tens of thousands well distributed SSR tracts. Mono Nucleotides Repeats (MNRs) are the majority of SSR tracts in bacteria, therefore selected MNR loci were analyzed for variation among strains belonging to three bacterial species: Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Vibrio cholerae. High levels of polymorphism in the number of repeats was observed. The finding that most of the MNR tracts are variable in bacterial genomes, but stable at the strain level, allows the use of MNRs for bacterial strains identification. The variation in MNR tracts enables the separation between virulent and non-virulent strain groups and further discriminates among bacterial isolates, in the three tested bacterial species. The uncovered MNR polymorphism is important as a genome-wide source of variation, both in practical applications (e.g. rapid strain identification) and in evolutionary studies. This multi-locus MNR strategy could be applied for high throughput bacterial typing by assigning an "identity number" for each strain based on MNR variations. The developed typing technology should include the fingerprint database for large bacterial strain collections and a high throughput scanner. This accurate and rapid tool can have a major role in decreasing the incidences of food-related outbreaks and will contribute to limit epidemics.     

Lateralized Lexical Decision in Schizophrenia: Hemispheric Specialization and Interhemispheric Lexicality Priming.

Reports of left-hemisphere dysfunction and abnormal interhemispheric transfer in schizophrenia are mixed. The authors used a unified paradigm, the lateralized lexical decision task, to assess hemispheric specialization in word recognition, hemispheric error monitoring, and interhemispheric transfer in male, right-handed participants with schizophrenia (n=34) compared with controls (n=20). Overall, performance and error monitoring were worse in patients. However, patients like controls showed left-hemisphere superiority for lexical processing and right-hemisphere superiority for error monitoring. Only patients showed selective-interhemispheric lexicality priming for accuracy, in which performance improved when the lexical status of target and distractor stimuli presented to each hemifield was congruent. Results suggest that schizophrenia is associated with impaired monitoring and with increased interhemispheric automatic information transfer rather than with changed hemispheric specialization for language or error monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing inventory data requirements for scenario representation in comparative life cycle assessment (LCA), demonstrated on the urban wastewater system

Wastewater reuse has become an attractive option for alleviating the stress from water resources. Centralized wastewater reuse is a common and continuously expanding practice worldwide, but the advantages of centralized over decentralized approaches are lately being questioned. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-accepted means of assessing the overall environmental performance of service systems, however, construction of a life cycle inventory (LCI) for complex systems such as urban wastewater systems, is very time consuming. Lack of resources and unavailability of data often enforce constraints on the scope of the assessment. In such cases it may be beneficial to consider the approach presented here, which manifests the differences between the studied alternatives. By eliminating processes that remain unchanged, less data and human resources are required in building the inventory, and less parameter uncertainty is introduced into the analysis. The proposed approach is demonstrated through the conceptual modeling steps of an assessment of decentralized urban wastewater reuse alternatives.     

Characterization and investigation of the mesogenic, thermo-morphologic and thermotropic properties of new chiral (S)-5-octyloxy-2-[{4-(2-methylbuthoxy)-phenylimino(methyl]phenol liquid crystalline compound

Synthesis, characterization and investigation of the mesogenic, thermo-morphologic and thermotropic properties of a new chiral liquid crystalline compound are presented in this work. This new compound has prolate molecules and exhibits the chiral smectic C* mesophase in a sufficiently large temperature interval. Two types of solid crystalline phases have been found in this compound. Typical textures and temperatures of the direct and reverse phase transitions, taking place in the compound, are given. Typical peculiarities for the first-order transition between the smectic C* mesophase and isotropic liquid have been observed.     

UV disinfection of RBC-treated light greywater effluent: kinetics, survival and regrowth of selected microorganisms

The microbial quality of raw greywater was found to be much better than that of municipal wastewater, with 1.6 x 10(7)cfu ml(-1) heterotrophic plate count (HPC), and 3.8 x 10(4), 9.9 x 10(3), 3.3 x 10(3) and 4.6 x 10(0)cfu 100 ml(-1) faecal coliforms (FC), Staphylococcus aureus sp., Pseudomonas aeruginosa sp. and Clostridium perfringes sp., respectively. Further, three viral indicators monitored (somatic phage, host: Escherichia coli CN(13) and F-RNA phages, hosts: E. coli F+(amp), E. coli K12) were not present in raw greywater. The greywater was treated by an RBC followed by sedimentation. The treatment removed two orders of magnitude of all bacteria. UV disinfection kinetics, survival and regrowth of HPC, FC, P. aeruginosa sp. and S. aureus sp. were examined. At doses up to 69 mW s cm(-2) FC were found to be the most resistant bacteria, followed by HPC, P. aeruginosa sp. and S. aureus sp. (inactivation rate coefficients: 0.0687, 0.113, 0.129 and 0.201 cm2 mW(-1)s(-1), respectively). At higher doses (69-439 mW s cm(-2)) all but HPC (which exhibited a tailing curve) were completely eliminated. Microscopic examination showed that FC self-aggregate in the greywater effluent. This provides FC an advantage at low doses, since the concentration of suspended matter (that can provide shelter from UV radiation) in the effluent was very low. FC, P. aeruginosa sp. and S. aureus sp. did not exhibit regrowth up to 6h after exposure to increasing UV doses (19-439 mW s cm(-2)). HPC regrowth was proven to be statistically significant in un-disinfected effluent and after irradiation with high UV doses (147 and 439 mW s cm(-2)). At these doses regrowth resulted from growth of UV-resistant bacteria due to decreased competition with other bacteria eliminated by the irradiation.     

Mercury depletion events in the troposphere in mid-latitudes at the Dead Sea, Israel

The occurrence of mercury depletion events (MDE) in the Polar Regions during the spring periods has raised global concern due to the biomagnifications of the deposited mercury into the aquatic food chain. However, it now appears that MDE is not limited to the Polar Regions and can also occur at mid-latitudes. Diurnal cycles of mercury, ozone, and BrO behavior based on short-time resolution measurements are presented for the Dead Sea, Israel, for Summer 2006. The results show that mercury depletion events occur almost daily, accompanied always by the presence of BrO and concurrent ozone destruction. The intensity of the MDE corresponded to increasing BrO levels. Mercury depletions of more than 40% were observed when BrO levels rose above 60-70 ppt. Based on the present measurements and supported bytheoretical considerations, it appears that BrOx (BrO + Br) is the primary species responsible for the mercury depletion at the Dead Sea. The present study also suggests, especially at low ozone levels, that the Br atom may play a major role in conversion of the gaseous elemental mercury to the reactive species, HgBr2. The implications of the present study are that even at low BrO levels (<10 ppt), mercury depletion may well occur at other mid-latitude sites and thus needs to be taken into consideration in the global mercury cycle.