Electrical and photovoltaic properties of an organic-inorganic heterojunction based on a BODIPY dye

An organic-inorganic heterojunction based on a BODIPY dyes has been produced by forming dye thin film on n-Si. The electrical parameters of the structure have been investigated by current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) measurements. The ideality factor, the barrier height and the series resistance values of the diode have been calculated as 2.43, 0.84 eV, and about 1.3 kΩ, respectively. The diode behaves as a non-ideal diode because of the series resistance and interface layer. The barrier height value obtained from I-V measurement has been compared with one from C-V measurement. Moreover, it has been seen that the diode is highly sensitive to the light and the reverse bias current increases about 1 × 10⁴ times at −1 V under 100 mW/cm² and AM1.5 illumination condition. The short photocurrent density (J_sc) and the open circuit voltage (V_oc), the fill factor (FF) and power conversion efficiency (η) have been determined as 3.78 mA/cm², 327 mV, 0.28 and 0.48 %, respectively.     

A Novel Approach to Limit Chemical Deterioration of Gilthead Sea Bream (Sparus aurata) Fillets: Coating with Electrospun Nanofibers as Characterized by Molecular,Thermal, and Microstructural Properties

Coating of sea bream fillets with thymol loaded chitosan based electrospun nanofibers (TLCN) and chitosan based nanafibers (CN) has been presented a novel approach to delay chemical deterioration. We assessed CN and TLCN with respect of scanting of total volatile basic nitrogen (TVBN), trimethylamine (TMA), thiobarbituric acid (TBA) deterioration during cold storage condition. Electrospinning process was applied to obtain TLCN and CN. Both of nanofibers obtained from biopolymer and bioactive material were cylindrical, smooth, beadless. Thermal, molecular, zeta potential (ZP), and surface properties of the groups were investigated, revealing that CN indicated molecular interactions with thymol in nanofibers, reduce in physical properties of these structures, thermal decomposition (an alteration in mass of CN and TLCN at temperatures below 190 °C, corresponding to 20.53% and 19.97%, respectively) and also dispersion stabilities (ζ potential) of CN and TLCN were determined 33.68 ± 3.35 and 21.85 ± 1.96 mV, respectively. TVBN and TMA stability analyses demonstrated that CN and TLCN were both effective in delaying chemical deterioration of fish fillets, furthermore TLCN was more effective against chemical deterioration. TBA analyses results of fish fillets indicated that CN and TLCN delayed rancidity in fish meat as compared to control group samples. The presented study results suggested that coating of the sea bream fillets with CN and TLCN would be a promising approach to delay the chemical deterioration of fish fillets.     

Large-scale biomedical image analysis in grid environments

This paper presents the application of a component-based Grid middleware system for processing extremely large images obtained from digital microscopy devices. We have developed parallel, out-of-core techniques for different classes of data processing operations employed on images from confocal microscopy scanners. These techniques are combined into a data preprocessing and analysis pipeline using the component-based middleware system. The experimental results show that: 1) our implementation achieves good performance and can handle very large datasets on high-performance Grid nodes, consisting of computation and/or storage clusters and 2) it can take advantage of Grid nodes connected over high-bandwidth wide-area networks by combining task and data parallelism.     

Parallel four‐dimensional Haralick texture analysis for disk‐resident image datasets

Texture analysis is one possible method of detecting features in biomedical images. During texture analysis, texture‐related information is found by examining local variations in image brightness. Four‐dimensional (4D) Haralick texture analysis is a method that extracts local variations along space and time dimensions and represents them as a collection of 14 statistical parameters. However, application of the 4D Haralick method on large time‐dependent image datasets is hindered by data retrieval, computation, and memory requirements. This paper describes a parallel implementation using a distributed component‐based framework of 4D Haralick texture analysis on PC clusters. The experimental performance results show that good performance can be achieved for this application via combined use of task‐ and data‐parallelism. In addition, we show that our 4D texture analysis implementation can be used to classify imaged tissues. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analytic hierarchy process and two-sided matching based decision support system for military personnel assignment

Assignment of military personnel to positions is very demanding, primarily a manual process performed by detailers. Detailers try to satisfy needs and preferences of commands and personnel. In this paper, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and two sided matching based Decision Support System is proposed to assist detailers. The DSS is programmed to generate positions’ preferences from position requirement profiles and personnel competence profiles by using analytic hierarchy process and matches personnel to positions by using two-sided matching. The use of the proposed DSS is demonstrated with an example. Also, the effects of preference list length on two-sided matching are examined.     

An Integrated Approach to Locality-Conscious Processor Allocation and Scheduling of Mixed-Parallel Applications

Complex parallel applications can often be modeled as directed acyclic graphs of coarse-grained application tasks with dependences. These applications exhibit both task and data parallelism, and combining these two (also called mixed parallelism) has been shown to be an effective model for their execution. In this paper, we present an algorithm to compute the appropriate mix of task and data parallelism required to minimize the parallel completion time (makespan) of these applications. In other words, our algorithm determines the set of tasks that should be run concurrently and the number of processors to be allocated to each task. The processor allocation and scheduling decisions are made in an integrated manner and are based on several factors such as the structure of the task graph, the runtime estimates and scalability characteristics of the tasks, and the intertask data communication volumes. A locality-conscious scheduling strategy is used to improve intertask data reuse. Evaluation through simulations and actual executions of task graphs derived from real applications and synthetic graphs shows that our algorithm consistently generates schedules with a lower makespan as compared to Critical Path Reduction (CPR) and Critical Path and Allocation (CPA), two previously proposed scheduling algorithms. Our algorithm also produces schedules that have a lower makespan than pure task- and data-parallel schedules. For task graphs with known optimal schedules or lower bounds on the makespan, our algorithm generates schedules that are closer to the optima than other scheduling approaches.     

Effect of an organic compound (Methyl Red) interfacial layer on the calculation of characteristic parameters of an Al/Methyl Red/p-Si sandwich Schottky barrier diode

An Al/Methyl Red/p-Si sandwich Schottky barrier diode (SBD) has been fabricated by adding a solution of the organic compound Methyl Red in chloroform onto a p-Si substrate, and then evaporating the solvent. Current-voltage (I-V) measurements of the Al/Methyl Red/p-Si sandwich SBD have been carried out at room temperature and in the dark. The Al/Methyl Red/p-Si sandwich SBD demonstrated rectifying behavior. Barrier height (BH) and ideality factor values of 0.855 eV and 1.19, respectively, for this device have been determined from the forward-bias I-V characteristics. The Al/Methyl Red/p-Si sandwich SBD showed non-ideal I-V behavior with the value of ideality factor greater than unity. The energy distribution of the interface state density determined from I-V characteristics increases exponentially with bias from 3.68 × 10¹² cm^− 2 eV^− 1 at (0.81 − E_v) eV to 9.99 × 10¹³ cm^− 2 eV^− 1 at (0.69 − E_v) eV.