Packet Delay Analysis of Symmetric Gated Polling System for DBA Scheme in an EPON

In this paper, we analyze the mean packet delay of a dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) scheme in an Ethernet passive optical network (EPON). We propose the interleaved polling system with a gated service discipline and a two-stage queue in order to investigate the delay performance of DBA scheme in an EPON. We assume that input packets arrive at an optical network unit (ONU) according to a Poisson process from several types of users. We use a continuous time queueing model in order to find the mean packet delay and the mean cycle time of an arbitrary packet. We obtain the closed form solution for the mean packet delay of the proposed gated polling system with a two-stage queue. We obtain another result on the mean packet delay by solving a system of linear equations derived from the moments of the queue length distribution. We give some numerical results to investigate the delay performances for the symmetric polling system with statistically identical stations. In addition, we compare numerical results on the closed form solution with numerical results on a system of linear equations.     

Fluorescent ferritin nanoparticles and application to the aptamer sensor

We synthesized fluorescent ferritin nanoparticles (FFNPs) through bacterial expression of the hybrid gene consisting of human ferritin heavy chain (hFTN-H), spacer (glycine-rich peptide), and enhanced green (or red) fluorescent protein [eGFP (or DsRed)] genes. The self-assembly activity of hFTN-H that leads to the formation of nanoparticles (12 nm in diameter), the conformational flexibility of the C-terminus of hFTN-H, and the glycine-rich spacer enabled eGFPs (or DsReds) to be well displayed on the surface of each ferritin nanoparticle, resulting in the construction of green (or red) FFNPs [gFFNPs (or rFFNPs)]. As compared to eGFP (or DsRed) alone, it is notable that the developed FFNPs showed significantly amplified fluorescence intensity and also enhanced stability. DNA aptamers were chemically conjugated to gFFNP via each eGFP's cysteine residue that was newly introduced through site-directed mutagenesis (Ser175Cys). The DNA-aptamer-conjugated gFFNPs were used as a fluorescent reporter probe in the aptamer-based "sandwich" assay of a cancer marker [i.e., platelet-derived growth factor B-chain homodimer (PDGF-BB)] in phosphate-buffered saline buffer or diluted human serum. This is a simple two-step assay without any additional steps for signal amplification, showing that compared to the same aptamer-based assays using eGFP alone or Cy3, the detection signals, affinity of the reporter probe to the cancer marker, and assay sensitivity were significantly enhanced; i.e., the limit of detection was lowered to the 100 fM level. Although the PDGF-BB assay is reported here as a proof-of-concept, the developed FFNPs can be applied in general to any aptamer-based sandwich assays.     

An Efficient Mobile Data Gathering Method with Tree Clustering Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks Balanced and Unbalanced Topologies

Wireless Personal Communications - Electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique of Electrophysiology used in a wide variety of scientific studies and applications. Inadequately, many commercial...     

A novel retrieval approach reflecting variability of syntactic phrase representation

In this paper, we introduce variability of syntactic phrases and propose a new retrieval approach reflecting the variability of syntactic phrase representation. With variability measure of a phrase, we can estimate how likely a phrase in a given query would appear in relevant documents and control the impact of syntactic phrases in a retrieval model. Various experimental results over different types of queries and document collections show that our retrieval model based on variability of syntactic phrases is very effective in terms of retrieval performance, especially for long natural language queries.     

Interferon-alpha as adjuvant treatment in chronic schizophrenia

The therapeutic use of interferon (IFN)-alpha administered as adjuvant medication in chronic schizophrenia was investigated. Natural leukocyte IFN-alpha was given to 9 long-term hospitalized chronic schizophrenic patients daily as subcutaneous injection of 3 million units 5 times a week. The trial followed a placebo-controlled double-blind crossover design. Each treatment period lasted for 8 weeks with a 2-week washout period in between. IFN-alpha did not prove to be beneficial for the total group of patients. Yet, 3 patients improved during the IFN-alpha drug period. The clinical improvement was seen as better social competence and less affective tension in the ward surroundings.     

Melting point elevation in compatible polymer blends

Summary An expression is presented which relates the experimentally observed melting point depression in crystallizable, compatible polymer blends to changes in lamellar thickness and thermodynamic considerations.Considering a given crystallization temperature, this relationship suggests that one should observe a depressed blend melting point, despite an increase in lamellar thickness over the pure crystallizable material.Possible explanations for the melting point elevation observed in some compatible blends are discussed.     

UV‐Curable Silver Electrode for Screen‐Printed Thermoelectric Generator

Fabricating thermoelectric generators (TEGs) using the screen‐printing process has advantages, including mass production, device scalability, and system applicability. However, the thick film formed through the process typically has low film density, and reduced performance, because of the presence of pores in the film created by the vaporization of the resin during high‐temperature annealing. During the soldering process used for thermoelectric module fabrication, the printed solder infiltrates into the screen‐printed electrodes through the micropores in the electrodes, causing cracks of the electrode film and an increase in resistivity. In this paper, an ultraviolet radiation (UV)‐curable process for screen‐printed electrodes is reported. The paste for the electrodes is synthesized by mixing Ag flakes that can be cured at low temperature with a UV resin. Scanning electron microscope images show that the UV‐curing process significantly reduces pores and thereby results in a smooth‐surfaced electrode layer. The film density after crystallization is also enhanced. TEGs composed of 72 couples with UV‐curable Ag electrodes generate a high power density of ≈6.69 mW cm^?2 at a temperature difference of 25 °C; the device resistance is ≈0.75 Ω, and the figure of merit of the device is recorded to be 0.57, which is the highest among the printed TEGs.     

Optimization of parallel firewalls filtering rules

As filtering policies are getting larger and more complex, packet filtering at firewalls needs to keep low delays. New firewall architectures are needed to enforce security and meet the increasing demand for high-speed networks. Two main architectures exist for parallelization, data-parallel and function-parallel firewalls. In the first, packets are distributed across a set of identical firewalls that implement the entire policy. In the second, each firewall implements a subset of the policy with a fewer number of rules, but the packets have to be duplicated and processed by all the firewalls. This paper proposes a new architecture function-parallel with pre-processing that combines the advantages of both architectures. The proposed architecture has the advantage of not duplicating the data, so that the processing time can be significantly reduced. Moreover, our architecture enables stateful inspection of packets, which is necessary to prevent multiple types of attacks. The performances of this architecture have been proven to be scalable for large security policies.

     

Synergistic Effects of Cation and Anion in an Ionic Imidazolium Tetrafluoroborate Additive for Improving the Efficiency and Stability of Half-Mixed Pb-Sn Perovskite Solar Cells

Narrow-bandgap mixed Pb-Sn perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have great feasibility for constructing efficient all-perovskite tandem solar cells, in combination with wide-bandgap lead halide PSCs. However, the power conversion efficiency of mixed Pb-Sn PSCs still lags behind lead-based counterparts. Here, additive engineering using ionic imidazolium tetrafluoroborate (IMBF₄) is proposed, where the imidazolium (IM) cation and tetrafluoroborate (BF₄) anion efficiently passivate defects at grain boundaries and improve crystallinity, simultaneously relaxing lattice strain, respectively. Defect passivation is achieved by the chemical interaction between the IM cation and the positively charged under-coordinated Pb²⁺ or Sn²⁺ ions, and lattice strain relaxation is realized by lattice expansion with the intercalation of BF₄ anions into the perovskite lattice. As a result, the synergistic effects of the cation and anion in the IMBF₄ additive greatly enhance the optoelectronic performance of half-mixed Pb-Sn perovskites, leading to much longer carrier lifetimes. The best-performing half-mixed Pb-Sn PSC shows an efficiency above 19% with negligible hysteresis, while retaining over 90% of its initial efficiency after 1000 h in a nitrogen-filled glovebox and showing a lifetime to 80% degradation of 53.5 h under continuous illumination.