Impact of Blend Morphology on Interface State Recombination in Bulk Heterojunction Organic Solar Cells

This work is a reinvestigation of the impact of blend morphology and thermal annealing on the electrical performance of regioregular‐P3HT:PC₆₀BM bulk heterojunction organic solar cells. The morphological, structural, and electrical properties of the blend are experimentally investigated with atomic force microscopy, X‐ray diffraction, and time‐of‐flight measurements. Current–voltage characteristics of photodiode devices are measured in the dark and under illumination. Finally, the existence of exponential electronic band tails due to gap states is experimentally confirmed by measuring the device spectral response in the subband gap regime. This method reveals the existence of a large density of gap states, which is partially and systematically reduced by thermal annealing. When the band tails are properly accounted for in the drift and diffusion simulations, experimentally measured charge transport characteristics, under both dark and illuminated conditions and as a function of annealing time, can be satisfactorily reproduced. This work further confirms the critical impact of tails states on the performance of solar cells.     

Measurement and modeling of dielectric properties of Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 ferroelectric thin films

In this study, the real and imaginary parts of the complex permittivity of lead zirconate titanate ferroelectric thin films are studied in the frequency range of 100 Hz to 100 MHz. The permittivity is well fitted by the Cole-Cole model. The variation of the relaxation time with the temperature is described by the Arrhenius law and an activation energy of 0.38 eV is found. Because of its nonlinear character, the dielectric response of the ferroelectric sample depends on the amplitude of the applied ac electric field. The permittivity is composed of three different contributions: the first is due to intrinsic lattice, the second is due to domain wall vibrations, and the third is due to domain wall jumps between pinning centers. This last contribution depends on the electric field, so it is important to control the field amplitude to obtain the desired values of permittivity and tunability.     

Effets d’un trou métallisé sur les caractéristiques de rayonnement d’une antenne plaque microruban alimentée par une ligne coaxiale à travers le plan de masse

Effects of the via-hole implementation on radiation characteristics of a microstrip patch antenna are computed on an EM resolver based upon integral equations and numerically solved by moment method. Coaxial feed and via-holes are considered as integral parts of the antenna so that after an accurate modeling of the incident field, induced effects of the holes are naturally accounted for. Results show that for some locations, the via-hole effects on the radiation characteristics are negligeable. Such predictions suggest solutions for various problems of practical interest in industrial applications of this new technology.     

Determination of homopolypeptide conformational changes by the modeling of electrophoretic mobilities

This work deals with the modeling of electrophoretic mobilities of end-charged homopolypeptides. The ionic mobilities of six families of homopolypeptides (polyglycines, poly-L-alanines, poly-L-valines, poly-L-leucines, poly-L-isoleucines, and poly-L-phenylalanines), with polymerization degrees up to 11, have been carefully determined. The electrophoretic frictional coefficients derived from the ionic mobility values were modeled by the hydrodynamic frictional coefficient of an equivalent cylinder. The hydrodynamic modeling allowed the determination of the molecular dimensions of the homopolypeptides in the electrolyte. The results were in good accordance with the expected geometry of the molecules. This approach allows monitoring the change in peptide conformations as a function of the experimental conditions (temperature, nature of the solvent) through the determination of geometrical molecular parameters (total peptide length, lateral radius of the equivalent cylinder, and folding angle). The influence of the bulkiness of the homopolypeptide lateral chain on the conformation is also discussed.     

Interlaboratory Assessment of Dried Blood Spot Fatty Acid Compositions

Dried blood spots for fatty acid profiling are increasing in popularity; however, variability in results between laboratories has not been characterized. Whole blood from two subjects (low and high n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid [PUFA] status) was collected, 25 μL applied to butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)-treated chromatography strips, dried in air, and shipped to five laboratories. Results were reported as “routine” (typical fatty acids for each laboratory) or “standardized” (a set of 19 fatty acids), and outliers and variability (%CV) were determined. Five and eight outliers of a possible 91 measures each were identified by routine and standardized reporting, respectively, including eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5n-3) in the low n-3 PUFA sample and arachidonic acid in the high n-3 PUFA sample. By standardized reporting, no outliers were identified for EPA or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6n-3), and %CV decreased from 8.6% to 6.0% and 9.1% to 6.6% for EPA and 10.5% to 7.2% and 10.5% to 6.6% for DHA in the low and high n-3 PUFA sample, respectively. In conclusion, fatty acid profiles yielded few outliers, and standardization of reporting reduced the variability between laboratories.     

Similarity based image selection with frame rate adaptation and local event detection in wireless video sensor networks

Wireless Video Sensor Networks (WVSNs7unding environmental information. Those sensor nodes can locally process the information and then wirelessly transmit it to the coordinator and to the sink to be further processed. As a consequence, more abundant video and image data are collected. In such densely deployed networks, the problem of data redundancy arises when information are gathered from neighboring nodes. To overcome this problem, one important enabling technology for WVSN is data aggregation, which is essential to be cost-efficient. In this paper, we propose a new approach for data aggregation in WVSN based on images and shot similarity functions. It is deployed on two levels: the video-sensor node level and the coordinator level. At the sensor node level the proposed algorithms aim at reducing the number of frames sensed by the sensor nodes and sent to the coordinator. At the coordinator level, after receiving shots from different neighbouring sensor nodes, the similarity between these shots is computed to eliminate redundancies and to only send the frames which meet a certain condition to the sink. The similarity between shots is evaluated based on their color, edge and motion information. We evaluate our approach on a live scenario and compare the results with another approach from the literature in terms of data reduction and energy consumption. The results show that the two approaches have a significant data reduction to reduce the energy consumption, thus our approach tends to overcome the other one in terms of reducing the energy consumption related to the sensing process, and to the transmitting process while guaranteeing the detection of all the critical events at the node and the coordinator levels.

     

Energy-efficient secured data reduction technique using image difference function in wireless video sensor networks

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become the rising stars of technology. Every object in this world tends to be sensorly developped, monitored and controlled....     

Natural Abundance Carbon Isotopic Analysis Indicates the Equal Contribution of Local Synthesis and Plasma Uptake to Palmitate Levels in the Mouse Brain

Saturated fatty acids are the most abundant fatty acids in the brain, however, there has been some debate regarding the ability of intact dietary saturated fatty acids to be incorporated into the brain. In the present study, we use compound specific isotope analysis to measure the natural abundance carbon isotopic signature of brain, liver, and blood palmitic acid (PAM) and compare it to the dietary PAM and sugar isotopic signatures to calculate the relative contribution of both the incorporation of intact and endogenously synthesized PAM to these pools. Mice were equilibrated to the study diet, and extracted fatty acids were analyzed with gas chromatography isotope ratio mass spectrometry to determine the carbon isotopic signature of PAM (δ¹³C_PAM). Liver, serum total, and serum unesterified fatty acid δ¹³C_PAM ranged between ?20.6 and ?21.1 mUr and were approximately 8.5 mUr more enriched in ¹³C when compared to the dietary PAM signature. Brain δ¹³C_PAM was found to be more enriched than liver or blood pools (?16.7 ± 0.2 mUr, mean ± SD). Two end‐member‐mixed modeling using the carbon isotopic signature of dietary PAM and dietary sugars determined the contribution of synthesis to the total tissue PAM pool to range between 44% and 48%. This suggests that endogenous synthesis and dietary PAM are near equal contributors to brain, liver, and blood PAM pools. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that brain PAM levels are maintained by both local endogenous synthesis and through the uptake of intact PAM from the blood.     

SR3: secure resilient reputation-based routing

In this paper, we propose SR3 (which means secure resilient reputation-based routing), a secure and resilient algorithm for convergecast routing in wireless sensor networks. SR3 uses lightweight cryptographic primitives to achieve data confidentiality and unforgeability. Security of SR3 has been proven formally using two verification tools: CryptoVerif and Scyther. We made simulations to show the resiliency of SR3 against various scenarios, where we mixed selective forwarding, blackhole, wormhole, and Sybil attacks. We compared our solution to several routing algorithms of the literature. Our results show that the resiliency accomplished by SR3 is drastically better than the one achieved by those protocols, especially when the network is sparse. Moreover, unlike previous solutions, SR3 self-adapts after compromised nodes suddenly change their behavior.