Electrical Characteristics of Al/Poly(methyl methacrylate)/p-Si Schottky Device

Al/Poly(methyl methacrylate)(PMMA)/p-Si organic Schottky devices were fabricated on a p-Si semiconductor wafer by spin coating of PMMA solution. The capacitance–voltage (C–V) and conductance–voltage (G–V) characteristics of Al/PMMA/p-Si structures have been investigated in the frequency range of 1 kHz–10 MHz at room temperature. The diode parameters such as ideality factor, series resistance and barrier height were calculated from the forward bias current–voltage (I–V) characteristics. In order to explain the electrical characteristics of metal–polymer–semiconductor (MPS) with a PMMA interface, the investigation of interface states density and series resistance from C–V and G–V characteristics in the MPS structures with thin interfacial insulator layer have been reported. The measurements of capacitance (C) and conductance (G) were found to be strongly dependent on bias voltage and frequency for Al/PMMA/p-Si structures. The values of interface state density (D _it) were calculated. These values of D _it and series resistance (R _s) were responsible for the non-ideal behavior of I–V and C–V characteristics.     

Performance study of a wireless mobile ad hoc network with orientation‐dependent internode communication scheme

A Petri‐net‐based simulation model of a wireless mobile ad hoc network is developed and studied. The model covers all the fundamental aspects of behaviour of such a network and uses a novel scheme of orientation‐dependent (or sector‐dependent) internode communication, with random states of links. The proposed scheme enables representation of reliability aspects of wireless communication, such as fading effects, interferences, presence of obstacles and weather conditions in a general and rather easy way. The simulation model was implemented in terms of a class of extended Petri nets to explicitly represent parallelism of events and processes in the WLAN as a distributed system. In the simulation, the behaviour of four fundamental performance metrics — packet delivery ratio, average number of hops, relative network traffic and end‐to‐end delay — were investigated with varying distance of transmission and different combinations of model parameters. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Coagulation factor V gene mutation increases the risk of venous thrombosis in beh?et's disease

We investigated the prevalence of the coagulation factor V gene G1691A mutation in 64 patients with Beh?et's disease (BD) and in 107 apparently healthy individuals. The mutation was present in the heterozygous state in 37.5% of the patients with a history of deep vein thrombosis (12/32) and in 9.4% of the patients without any thrombotic event (3/32). Eleven healthy individuals were also heterozygous for the mutation (10.3%). The prevalence of the mutation in BD patients with and without thrombosis was significantly different (P = 0.0079). We conclude that the factor V gene mutation may play a major role in the development of venous thrombosis in BD.     

Determination of Heterocyclic Aromatic Amines in Cooked Commercial Frozen Meat Products by Ultrafast Liquid Chromatography

This paper describes a method for the determination of nine heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCAs) in commercial frozen meat products, which were sold in Turkey by ultrafast liquid chromatography (UFLC) with ultraviolet visible detection. HCAs are separated on a Shim-pack XR-ODS (7.5?×?3 mm, 2.2 μm). Varying levels of 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (IQ) (up to 1.95 ng/g), 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (IQx) (up to 4.17 ng/g), 2-amino-3,4-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (MeIQ) (up to 0.69 ng/g), 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (MeIQx) (up to 0.83 ng/g), 2-amino-3,4,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (4,8-DiMeIQx) (up to 0.22 ng/g), 2-amino-3,7,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (7,8-DiMeIQx) (up to 0.94 ng/g), 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b] pyridine (PhIP) (up to 4.58 ng/g), 2-amino-9H-pyrido[2,3-b]indole (AαC) (up to 0.57 ng/g), and 2-amino-3-methyl-9H-pyrido[2,3-b]indole (MeAαC) (up to 3.51 ng/g) were detected in these commercial frozen meat products of Turkey. The data obtained show clearly that HCAs could be isolated in a very short time (5 min) by using UFLC.     

Deterministic Maximum likelihood Approach for Localization of Near-field Sources

In this paper we proposed deterministic maximum likelihood approach for estimating the direction of arrival and range parameters of the near-field sources. Direct maximum likelihood estimation of near-field source parameters results in complicated multi-parameter optimization problems, we therefore reformulated the estimation problem in terms of actual-datasample, called the incomplete data and a hypothetical dataset, called the complete data and then devised the Expectation/Maximization iterative method for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates. The Expectation/Maximization algorithm decomposes the observed data into its components and then estimates the parameters of each signal component separately providing computationally efficient solution to the resulting optimization problem. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is illustrated by some numerical simulations.     

Fuel cell and ultra-capacitor hybridization: A prototype test bench based analysis of different energy management strategies for vehicular applications

An energy storage system with sufficient power capacity should be incorporated with fuel cells (FCs) to compensate the slow dynamics of FCs. Ultra-capacitors (UCs) are potential candidates for a solution in this aspect. A test bench of such an FC/UC hybrid configuration that can emulate the dynamics of vehicular systems is presented in this paper. Namely, the test bench performance verification of wavelet transform and fuzzy logic based energy management strategy that was discussed in earlier simulation-based studies of the authors is investigated. Of equal importance is the comparison of the cascade wavelet-fuzzy logic based strategy with the case of using only fuzzy logic in the energy management is presented. Experimental results with small-scale devices, a PEMFC (5 kW, 48 V) manufactured by Plug Power^® Company, and a UC bank composed of 430 F, 16 V and 165 F, 48 V UC modules manufactured by Maxwell Technologies^® Company, illustrate the successful performance analysis of employed energy management schemes during similar motor cycles.     

Parameters of color,transparency, water solubility,wettability and surface free energy of chitosan/hydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) films plasticized with sorbitol

This work examined the parameters of color, transparency, water solubility, wettability and surface free energy of chitosan/ydroxypropylmethylcellulose (HPMC) blends plasticized with sorbitol. The solutions of chitosan and hydroxypropylmethylcellulose were mixed in different proportions (100/0; 70/30; 50/50; 30/70 and 0/100 respectively), and 20 mL was casting in Petri dishes to posterior analysis of formed films. The CIELab method was used to determine the L?, a? and b? color values of the samples. The color was affected by different proportion of chitosan/hydroxypropylmethylcellulose. The higher the HPMC proportion in the films, the higher the solubility in water. Contact angle measurements showed an increment in the values of the polar surface free energy and the hydrophilic character when HPMC component was increased in the blend.     

A re-examination of stationarity of energy consumption: Evidence from new unit root tests

In this paper, we re-examine the stochastic behaviour of per capita total primary energy consumption across 178 countries around the world. For this purpose, in addition to conventional unit root tests, we apply newly developed tests that allow for nonlinear adjustments and structural breaks in the data generating process. The results of the unit root tests show that allowing for structural breaks and nonlinearity result in more frequent rejection of the null hypothesis of unit root, suggesting that most of the series under consideration follow a stationary process. These findings imply that both energy economists and policy makers must be careful and take account of possible nonlinearities and structural breaks in their analyses of energy consumption. In addition, the results imply that government interventions into the energy markets in most countries have no effect in the long run, although the short-run effects of the interventions depend on the size and the direction of interventions.     

The inhibitory effect of black pepper on formation of heterocyclic aromatic amines in high-fat meatball

The effect of black pepper on the formation of heterocyclic aromatic amines (HCAs) in high-fat meatball fried at three different frying temperatures (175 °C, 200 °C, and 225 °C) was investigated. The fried samples were analyzed for five HCAs, including 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (IQ), 2-amino-3,4-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (MeIQ), 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (MeIQx), 2-amino-3,4,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (4,8-DiMeIQx), and 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b] pyridine (PhIP). In control group meatballs without black pepper, the total HCAs amount increased in parallel with the frying temperature increased. The highest total HCA amount was found 37.81 ng/g in control group meatballs fried at 225 °C, 31.80 ng/g of which belonged to PhIP accounting.  The reduction of black pepper on PhIP compound was 100%. On the perspective of total HCA amount, black pepper has an inhibitory effect (ranging from about 12 to 100%). MeIQx was not detected in any of chops samples.