Improving the sensory and nutritional value of gluten-free bread

Bakery products, especially breads, are important part of everyday diet. Home-made breads are all the more crucial on the gluten-free diet, as commercially available breads without gluten are often unattractive. The study presents the recipe, nutritional characteristics (fat, protein, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, copper, iron, zinc, manganese), costs and consumer acceptance of four easy to make home-made gluten-free breads. Partial substitution of bread-mix based on corn and rice (control bread) with teff flour, amaranth flour or quinoa flour significantly changed the content of the most of analysed nutrients, while their price was comparable. The highest nutritional benefits were found for protein, magnesium, potassium, calcium, zinc, iron and manganese in bread with teff and for magnesium, potassium, zinc and manganese in bread with amaranth. The highest consumer acceptance of people on gluten-free diet was noticed for breads with quinoa and teff.     

Lossless electroabsorption modulator monolithically integrated with a semiconductor optical amplifier and a passive waveguide

We have developed a monolithic integrated device consisting of an electroabsorption modulator and a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) connected by a deep-ridge passive waveguide by means of butt-joint selective area growth. Lossless operation with a high extinction ratio of 32 dB and clear eye opening at 10 Gb/s are successfully achieved. We confirm that the optical injection should be from the SOA side of the device to obtain a wide error-free range of incident optical power from -20 to +10 dBm. Our device could lead to richly functional photonic integrated circuits comprising arrayed waveguide gratings (AWGs) for advanced wavelength-division-multiplexing networks, since the passive waveguide has the same structure as AWGs.     

Degradation behavior in InGaAs/GaAs strained-quantum well lasers

Facet degradation mechanisms of a 980-nm InGaAs/GaAs strained-quantum well laser are analyzed by monitoring the optical-beam induced current. It is clarified that the behavior of defects around the facets govern the long-term stability as well as catastrophic-optical damage generation during operation.     

An over 10-Gb/s transmission experiment using a p-type delta-dopedInGaAs-GaAs quantum-well vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

We have fabricated a p-type delta-doped InGaAs-GaAs quantum-well (QW) vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with a low-resistance GaAs-AlAs distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). The threshold was as low as 700 μA for 10×10 μm² devices. A penalty-free 10-Gb/s transmission experiment with a 100-m-long multimode fiber was performed using fabricated VCSELs. The modulation speed was up to 12 Gb/s, which was limited by an RC constant. Further threshold reduction and high-speed operation can be expected by controlling the doping concentration in p-type delta-doped layers     

Large left-to-right shunt through a small atrial septal defect produced by progressive aortic stenosis in the elderly--a case report

We present a 74-year-old female who showed a large left-to-right shunt through a small atrial septal defect presumably due to diastolic dysfunction of the left ventricle caused by the progression of aortic stenosis. Accordingly, elderly patients with even small atrial septal defect should be followed carefully, since diastolic dysfunction of the acquired left ventricular disorder could increase the left-to-right shunt.     

Single transverse mode operation of 1.55-μm buriedheterostructure vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

In this letter, we report the single-mode operation of 1.55-μm buried heterostructure vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) fabricated on a GaAs-AlAs distributed Bragg reflector using thin-film wafer fusion. A 7-μm VCSEL exhibits a single transverse mode at up to about 0.1-mW maximum optical output power and 75°C maximum operation temperature under continuous-wave operation     

Data transmission over single-mode fiber by using 1.2-μmuncooled GaInAs-GaAs laser for Gb/s local area network

We demonstrate 2-Gb/s data transmission through a 5-km-long standard single-mode fiber by using a GaAs-based 1.2-μm GaInAs-GaAs quantum well laser. The fabricated laser exhibits a high characteristic temperature of 140 K. The results indicate the possibility of Gigabit/s local area networks (LANs) using uncooled lasers (possibly surface-emitting lasers) operating at a 1.2-μm wavelength band     

100/spl deg/C 10 Gbit/s directly modulated InGaAsP DFB lasers with Ru-doped semi-insulating buried heterostructure

A directly modulated 1.3 /spl mu/m InGaAsP DFB laser with a simple buried structure using Ru-doped semi-insulating InP is presented. The high relaxation oscillation frequency of 10 GHz was obtained at 95/spl deg/C. Clear eye openings under 10 Gbit/s direct modulation were achieved from 0 to 100/spl deg/C.