A generalist herbivore in a specialist mode Metabolic,sequestrative, and defensive consequences

Adults of a generalist herbivore, the lubber grasshopper,Romalea guttata, can be converted to functional specialists by feeding them exclusively on catnip,Nepeta cataria. No obvious adverse effects on adult development resulted from this enforced monophagy. Notwithstanding the fact thatR. guttata has had no coevolutionary relationship with this Eurasian mint, it readily sequesters compounds that are identical to or derived from the terpenoid lactones that are characteristic ofN. cataria. R. guttata appears to both biomagnify minor allelochemicals and to sequester metabolites of theNepeta terpenes in its paired defensive glands. The levels of autogenously produced phenolics are not affected by feeding onN. cataria and the defensive secretions of catnip-fed grasshoppers are more repellent to ants than those of wild-fed acridids. Metabolites of theN. cataria monoterpenes are sequestered in the defensive glands when catnip is added to the natural diet ofR. guttata. The ability of a generalist,R. guttata, to facilely bioaccumulate a potpourri of foreign allelochemicals when feeding in a specialist mode is analyzed in terms of its biochemical, physiological, and functional significance. Sequestration is examined as a response to the enteric effronteries represented by the phytochemicals that can be characteristic of the overload in a monophagous diet.     

Glass Formation and Properties in the System Calcia-Gallia-Silica

The glass-formation region of the calcia-gallia-silica system was determined. The glasses within this region were measured to have a density of 3 to 4 g/cm³, a refractive index of 1.6 to 1.73, an Abbe number between 35 and 58, a thermal expansion coefficient of 6.5 × 10⁻⁷/°C to 11.5 × 10⁻⁷/°C, softening temperatures between 730° and 790°C, and a Vickers microhardness of 5.2 to 7.3 GPa. Crystalline phases were identified along the glass-formation boundary. Infrared transmission spectra were used to explain glass structures and their effect on glass properties. The results suggest that the role of calcia in the glass structure is similar to that for calcia in calcium aluminosilicate glasses.     

Intravital leukocyte detection using the gradient inverse coefficient of variation

The problem of identifying and counting rolling leukocytes within intravital microscopy is of both theoretical and practical interest. Currently, methods exist for tracking rolling leukocytes in vivo, but these methods rely on manual detection of the cells. In this paper we propose a technique for accurately detecting rolling leukocytes based on Bayesian classification. The classification depends on a feature score, the gradient inverse coefficient of variation (GICOV), which serves to discriminate rolling leukocytes from a cluttered environment. The leukocyte detection process consists of three sequential steps: the first step utilizes an ellipse matching algorithm to coarsely identify the leukocytes by finding the ellipses with a locally maximal GICOV. In the second step, starting from each of the ellipses found in the first step, a B-spline snake is evolved to refine the leukocytes boundaries by maximizing the associated GICOV score. The third and final step retains only the extracted contours that have a GICOV score above the analytically determined threshold. Experimental results using 327 rolling leukocytes were compared to those of human experts and currently used methods. The proposed GICOV method achieves 78.6% leukocyte detection accuracy with 13.1% false alarm rate.     

Asymptotic Distortion Performance of Source-Channel Diversity over Multihop and Relay Channels

A key challenge in the design of real-time wireless multimedia systems is the presence of fading coupled with strict delay constraints. A very effective answer to this problem is the use of diversity achieving techniques to overcome the fading nature of the wireless channels caused by the mobility of the nodes. The mobility of the nodes gives rise to the need of cooperation among the nodes to enhance the system performance. This paper focuses on comparing systems that exhibit diversity of three forms: source coding diversity, channel coding diversity, and user cooperation diversity implemented through multihop or relay channels with amplify-and-forward or decode-and-forward protocols. Commonly used in multimedia communications, performance is measured in terms of the distortion exponent, which measures the rate of decay of the end-to-end distortion at asymptotically high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). For the case of repetition coding at the relay nodes, we prove that having more relays is not always beneficial. For the general case of having a large number of relays that can help the source using repetition coding, the optimum number of relay nodes that maximizes the distortion exponent is determined in this paper. This optimum number of relay nodes will depend on the system bandwidth as well as the channel quality. The derived result shows a trade-off between the quality (resolution) of the source encoder and the amount of cooperation (number of relay nodes). Also, the performances of the channel coding diversity-based scheme and the source coding diversity-based scheme are compared. The results show that for both relay and multihop channels, channel coding diversity provides the best performance, followed by the source coding diversity.     

High-Power 1.3-μm Quantum-Dot Superluminescent Light-Emitting Diode Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

In this letter, we demonstrate the improved performance of 1.3-mum seven-layered InAs-GaAs quantum-dot superluminescent light-emitting diodes by the engineering of the epitaxial growth conditions alone, namely the thickness of the low-temperature GaAs spacer layer between quantum-dot layers. For laser devices, a significant reduction in threshold current density and increase in external efficiency is observed, while for superluminescent diode structures, a ~4 fold increase in CW power at a given drive current is obtained     

用于130nm/90nm新工艺开发的铜CMP阻挡层磨料系统(英文)

通过与实验室的CMP和集成工程师合作,采用测试系统观察两种或两种以上混合配方磨料的选择比。实验数据表明,通过改变单个化学试剂组分的浓度改变磨料的选择比效果突出,磨料配方师可以简便地修改磨料配方。这种方法的优点是,如果改变集成方法或特殊膜层,可以很快地重新优化磨料。如SiN膜取代TEOW淀积氧化物膜,对新系统可以容易地重新优化磨料。介绍了几种磨料组分浓度的去除速率和选择比。     

Self‐Healing Reduced Graphene Oxide Films by Supersonic Kinetic Spraying

The industrial scale application of graphene and other functional materials in the field of electronics has been limited by inherent defects, and the lack of simple deposition methods. A simple spray deposition method is developed that uses a supersonic air jet for a commercially available reduced graphene oxide (r‐GO) suspension. The r‐GO flakes are used as received, which are pre‐annealed and pre‐hydrazine‐treated, and do not undergo any post‐treatment. A part of the considerable kinetic energy of the r‐GO flakes entrained by the supersonic jet is used in stretching the flakes upon impact with the substrate. The resulting “frozen elastic strains” heal the defects (topological defects, namely Stone‐Wales defect and C₂ vacancies) in the r‐GO flakes, which is reflected in the reduced ratio of the intensities of the D and G bands in the deposited film. The defects can also be regenerated by annealing.     

一个应用于数字音频的高性能、低功耗ΣΔ模数转换器

本文介绍了一个应用于18位高端音频的ΣΔ模数转换器(ADC)。它包括一个2-1级联结构的ΣΔ调制器和一个数字抽取滤波器。在系统设计、电路实现和版图设计的过程中采取了许多优化措施,包括：选择了一个能够实现高过载水平的调制器结构并对其系数进行优化,实现了一个高能效的A/AB 类跨导放大器和一个面积和功耗优化的多级抽取滤波器。模数转换器在中芯国际0.18μm 混合信号CMOS 工艺中流片。测试结果表明在22.05 KHz带宽内,信噪失真比和动态范围分别达到91dB和94dB,而芯片面积为2.1 mm2,其中模拟部分仅消耗2.1mA静态电流。     

Compact Harmonic Filter Design and Fabrication Using IPD Technology

An integrated passive device (IPD) technology has been developed to meet the ever increasing needs of size and cost reduction in radio front-end transceiver module applications. Electromagnetic (EM) simulation was used extensively in the design of the process technology and the optimization of inductor and harmonic filter designs and layouts. Parameters such as inductor shape, inner diameter, metal thickness, metal width, and substrate thickness have been optimized to provide inductors with high quality factors. The technology includes 1) a thick plated gold metal process to reduce resistive loss; 2) MIM capacitors using PECVD SiN dielectric layer; 3) airbridges for inductor underpass and capacitor pick-up; and 4) a 10 mil finished GaAs substrate to improve inductor quality factor. Both lumped element circuit simulations and electromagnetic (EM) simulations have been used in the harmonic filter circuit designs for high accuracy and fast design cycle time. This paper will present the EM simulation calibration and demonstrate the importance of using EM simulation in the filter design in order to achieve first-time success in wafer fabrication. The fabricated IPD devices have insertion loss of 0.5 dB and harmonic rejections of 30dB with die size of 1.42 mm for high band (1710 MHz-1910 MHz) and 1.89 mm for low band (824-915 MHz) harmonic filters.