Fabrication of high surface area graphitic nanoflakes on carbon nanotubes templates

Graphitic nanoflakes were fabricated on the carbon nanotubes templates for increasing the surface area utilizing bias assisted microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MWPECVD). The analysis of morphologies and structures were achieved by means of scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The surface area of graphitic nanoflakes, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphitic nanoflakes/CNTs were 57.44 m²/g, 90.31 m²/g and 130.96 m²/g from BET measurement, respectively. The cyclic voltammetry was used to calculate the active area of platinum catalysts in 1 M sulfuric acid from hydrogen adsorption peak. An enhancement of activity could be observed from the calculation of CV results. This may be attributed to the small particle size and high dispersion of platinum particles coated on graphitic nanoflakes/CNTs. These high surface area materials could be used as catalysts supports or electrode for fuel cell applications.     

An all-optical 2R regenerator using a compact self-seeded Fabry-Pe/spl acute/rot laser diode incorporated in a bidirectional EDFA

An all-optical 2R regenerator, based on a compact self-seeded Fabry-Pe/spl acute/rot laser diode with a 10-mm-long embedded fiber Bragg grating cavity, and a bidirectional erbium-doped fiber amplifier, is proposed and experimentally demonstrated to execute all-optical 2R regeneration at 10 Gb/s. Compared with the conventional 1R regeneration, the proposed scheme has achieved significant 6.4-dB improvement of power penalty at bit-error ratio =10/sup -9/ in the transmission experiment over 100-km standard single-mode fiber.     

Parameterized Two-Player Nash Equilibrium

We study the problem of computing Nash equilibria in a two-player normal form (bimatrix) game from the perspective of parameterized complexity. Recent results proved hardness for a number of variants, when parameterized by the support size. We complement those results, by identifying three cases in which the problem becomes fixed-parameter tractable. Our results are based on a graph-theoretic representation of a bimatrix game, and on applying graph-theoretic tools on this representation.     

The p38 and NFκB signaling protein activation involved in glycitein protective effects on isoproterenol-treated H9c2 cardiomyoblast cells

Heart disease (HD) is greatly associated with gender and clinical evidence shows that increased serum norepinephrine levels are found in patients with HD. This study investigates the cardio-protective effect of glycitein, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) from soy bean extract, on H9c2 cardiomyoblast cells treated with isoproterenol (ISO, a norepinephrine analog). The image data and results from western blotting showed that ISO treatment was capable of inducing cellular apoptosis, especially the mitochondrial dependent pathway. Glycitein treatment could suppress mitochondrial pro-apoptotic proteins expression including caspase-9 and caspase-3 in H9c2 treated with ISO. In contrast, several survival proteins were expressed in H9c2 cells treated with glycitein, such as phosphor (p)-Akt, p-Bad and Akt. We confirmed that the protective role of glycitein was partially mediated through the expression of p-38 and NFκB proteins by adding several pathway inhibitors.     

Directional broadcast for mobile ad hoc networks with percolation theory

For mobile ad hoc networks, network-wide broadcast is a critical network layer function supporting route discovery and maintenance in many unicast and multicast protocols. A number of broadcast schemes have been proposed; however, almost all of them assume the usage of omnidirectional antennas and focus on broadcast overhead in terms of the number of forwarding nodes. Directional antennas have narrow beams and can potentially reduce broadcast overhead in terms of the ratio of the number of received duplicate packets to the number of nodes that receive broadcast packets. In this paper, we propose to map probability-based directional and omnidirectional broadcast to bond and site percolation, respectively, and describe a collection of directional antenna-based broadcast schemes for mobile ad hoc networks. A thorough and comparative simulation study is conducted to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed schemes.     

Investigation of the Phase Equilibria of Sn-Cu-Au Ternary and Ag-Sn-Cu-Au Quaternary Systems and Interfacial Reactions in Sn-Cu/Au Couples

The phase equilibria of the Sn-Cu-Au ternary, Ag-Sn-Cu-Au quaternary systems and interfacial reactions between Sn-Cu alloys and Au were experimentally investigated at specific temperatures in this study. The experimental results indicated that there existed three ternary intermetallic compounds (IMCs) and a complete solid solubility between AuSn and Cu₆Sn₅ phases in the Sn-Cu-Au ternary system at 200°C. No quaternary IMC was found in the isoplethal section of the Ag-Sn-Cu-Au quaternary system. Three IMCs, AuSn, AuSn₂, and AuSn₄, were found in all couples. The same three IMCs and (Au,Cu)Sn/(Cu,Au)₆Sn₅ phases were found in all Sn-Cu/Au couples. The thickness of these reaction layers increased with increasing temperature and time. The mechanism of IMC growth can be described by using the parabolic law. In addition, when the reaction time was extended and the Cu content of the alloy was increased, the AuSn₄ phase disappeared gradually. The (Au, Cu)Sn and (Cu_,Au)₆Sn₅ layers played roles as diffusion barriers against Sn in Sn-Cu/Au reaction couple systems.     

Effects of Impact Inertia and Surface Characteristics on Deposited Polymer Droplets in Microcavities

Microflow visualization and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are complementarity performed to study the evolution of a single poly(ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) droplet ejected from a piezoelectric ink-jet printhead and the equilibrium film characteristic of the droplet deposition in a microfabricated cavity. The verified CFD code is further applied to investigate the influences of contact angles thetas_s of the PEDOT droplet/air interface and the PEDOT droplet/cavity sidewall interface as well as droplet impact velocity Vd on the transient deposition process in the micro cavity. Impact inertia was studied by varying the droplet Weber number from 30.3 to 42.6. The surface characteristics are explored by choosing thetas_s of 10deg, 30deg, 50deg, 70deg, 90deg, and 110deg. The influences of impact inertia are also examined by increasing Vd from 2.0 to 12.0 m/s at 2.0 m/s interval. The computed results are found in good agreement with the experimental ones. For the first time, critical Weber numbers have been found relating to the ability of the droplet to wet the side walls and fill a microcavity with a uniform film. The results are also new in terms of the identifications of the critical contact angle (thetas_s)_C and critical impact velocity (Vd)_c. At (thetas_s)_C and at and beyond (Vd)_c, the formation of an intact flat film in the cavity is fulfilled.     

Discovering timely information in MANETs

Timely information refers to information whose ‘most recent’ or ‘latest’ instance is most valuable. In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), multiple instances of a piece of timely information may be produced by different nodes at different points in time. The problem is to discover the ‘latest’ instance among all existing instances. Within the context of MANETs, timely information discovery is fundamentally different from the existing resource/service discovery problem whose goal is to discover either any instance or a subset of instances which satisfy a local query constraint that can be specified and evaluated using only local attributes of each individual node. In contrast, the timely information discovery problem imposes the global (timeliness) constraint which should best be evaluated when all the instances are considered to determine the latest instance. The complication of discovering timely information arises from the existence of multiple instances of the information, which are produced at different points in time by different nodes in the network, and the need to collect all these instances to decide the latest instance. For MANETs, the lack of infrastructure supports, frequent topology changes, and potential packet loss in wireless communications further challenge the problem of timely information discovery. This paper describes a self-organizing, peer-to-peer based approach, termed ALADIN, to discovering timely information in MANETs. In ALADIN, nodes that produce instances of the timely information are peers who self-organize an adaptive and distributed ‘search infrastructure’ to facilitate the discovery of the latest instance. A simulation study shows that ALADIN is scalable without incurring network-wide flooding in the case of large-scale networks and popular timely information, and yields a high chance of discovering the latest instance in the presence of mobility.     

Cluster-based blind nonlinear-channel estimation

A cluster-based maximum-likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE) for nonlinear channels was described, which consists of a clustering network and an MLSE implemented by the Viterbi algorithm. The cluster-based MLSE can be used for digital communication through nonlinear finite-length channels because channel mapping estimation is used instead of channel estimation in the conventional MLSE. The clustering network of the cluster-based MLSE, which estimates the channel mapping between the signal input vectors and the noiseless channel outputs, is a supervised network and requires a training sequence. We propose a blind channel mapping estimator to estimate the channel mapping without using the training sequence. The blind channel mapping estimator has a clustering block and a mapping block. The clustering block estimates the channel outputs, which represent the channel mapping, subject to an unknown permutation operation because no training sequence is utilized. That permutation operation is resolved by the mapping block, and therefore, the channel mapping is obtained. Introducing the blind channel mapping estimator into the cluster-based MLSE, a blind cluster-based MLSE for nonlinear channels can be done. Computer simulations of the blind channel mapping estimator and the blind MLSE for nonlinear channels are presented     

Interfacial Reactions of Sn, Sn-3.0Ag-0.5Cu, and Sn-9Zn Lead-Free Solders with Fe-42Ni Substrates

Interfacial reactions between Sn, Sn-3.0 wt.%Ag-0.5 wt.%Cu (SAC), and Sn-9 wt.%Zn (SZ) lead-free solders and Fe-42 wt.%Ni (alloy 42) substrates at 240°C, 255°C, and 270°C were investigated in this study. FeSn₂, (Fe,Ni, Cu)Sn₂, and (Ni,Fe)₅Zn₂₁ phases were formed, respectively, at the interface in the Sn/alloy 42, SAC/alloy 42, and SZ/alloy 42 couples. As the reaction time and temperature were increased, the layered intermetallic compound (IMC) assumed two distinct structures, i.e., a thicker layer and a pillar-shaped IMC, in all couples. The IMC thickness of these couples increased with the increase of reaction time and temperature. The IMC thickness was also proportional to the square root of the reaction time. The interfacial reaction mechanism of these couples was diffusion controlled.