Brookite Formation in TiO2?Ag Nanocomposites and Visible‐Light‐Induced Templated Growth of Ag Nanostructures in TiO2

TiO₂? Ag‐nanocomposites exhibit various desirable properties that make them suitable for a variety of applications, for example in photocatalysis and as bactericidal coatings. In this work, a new method for processing TiO₂? Ag nanocomposites is presented. The nanocomposite films are fabricated from one precursor solution with high silver loading of up to 50%. The resulting films exhibit a microstructure consisting of TiO₂? Ag_xO nanocomposites with a largely XRD‐amorphous TiO₂ matrix containing brookite nanocrystals. This specific microstructure absorbs in the visible range so that photoreduction of Ag ions can be accomplished by using visible light. The thin films can be patterned using simple shadow masks. The illuminated areas show a high density of self‐organized nanoparticles (SNPs) and nanorods (SNRs), which are templated by the TiO₂ porous network. The particle size can be tuned by varying the irradiation time. Most of the SNPs and SNRs form faceted crystals, which are mostly a combination of {111} and {110}. The application of these films as substrates for surface‐enhanced Raman scattering is shown. Enhancement factors as high as 4.6 × 10⁶ could be obtained using rhodamine 6G dye molecules. More applications should involve photocatalytic water purification using visible light.     

Rapid Generation of Biologically Relevant Hydrogels Containing Long‐Range Chemical Gradients

Many biological processes are regulated by gradients of bioactive chemicals. Thus, the generation of materials with embedded chemical gradients may be beneficial for understanding biological phenomena and generating tissue‐mimetic constructs. Here a simple and versatile method to rapidly generate materials containing centimeter‐long gradients of chemical properties in a microfluidic channel is described. The formation of a chemical gradient is initiated by a passive‐pump‐induced forward flow and further developed during an evaporation‐induced backward flow. The gradient is spatially controlled by the backward flow time and the hydrogel material containing the gradient is synthesized via photopolymerization. Gradients of a cell‐adhesion ligand, Arg‐Gly‐Asp‐Ser (RGDS), are incorporated in poly(ethylene glycol)‐diacrylate (PEG‐DA) hydrogels to test the response of endothelial cells. The cells attach and spread along the hydrogel material in a manner consistent with the RGDS‐gradient profile. A hydrogel containing a PEG‐DA concentration gradient and constant RGDS concentration is also shown. The morphology of cells cultured on such hydrogel changes from round in the lower PEG‐DA concentration regions to well‐spread in the higher PEG‐DA concentration regions. This approach is expected to be a valuable tool to investigate the cell–material interactions in a simple and high‐throughput manner and to design graded biomimetic materials for tissue engineering applications.     

Hierarchically Assembled Mesenchymal Stem Cell Spheroids Using Biomimicking Nanofilaments and Microstructured Scaffolds for Vascularized Adipose Tissue Engineering

Composite multicellular spheroids composed of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and synthetic biodegradable nanofilaments are fabricated. Extracellular‐matrix‐mimicking nanofilaments, prepared from transverse fragmentation of semicrystalline poly(L ‐lactic acid) nanofibers and subsequent surface modification with cell adhesive peptides, are used to form composite multicellular spheroids with MSCs by cellular self‐assembly. The size of the composite spheroids could be readily controlled with the integrated amount of the nanofilaments. The composite spheroids show enhanced adipogenic potential compared to homotypic spheroids. The resultant spheroids are used as building blocks for 3D biohybrid construction with the assistance of a microstructured scaffold fabricated by a direct polymer melt deposition process. An angiogenic growth factor, basic fibroblast growth factor, is also locally delivered in a sustained fashion from the heparinized scaffold surface for facile neovascularization of adipogenic tissue. The produced multiscaled and multifunctional hybrid MSC construct enable the successful formation of vascularized adipose tissue in vivo.     

A performance study for IPv4–IPv6 translation in IP multimedia core network subsystem

A Next Generation Network (NGN) is an advanced, packet‐based network that exploits broadband and QoS‐enabled transport technologies for enabling multimedia services. In NGNs, the principles and requirements of IP Multimedia Sub‐system (IMS), which are used to deliver the desired benefits, should be carefully examined and studied. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is adopted by Third‐generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to solve address storage problem and provide new features (e.g. plug‐and‐play and mobility) for IMS. However, in the early stage of IPv6 deployment, the existing Voice‐over‐IP (VoIP) networks support Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) only. For IPv4–IPv6 interworking between IMS and the existing VoIP networks, the IMS‐Application Level Gateway (IMS‐ALG) and the Transition Gateway (TrGW) are proposed to translate Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and Real‐time Transport Protocol (RTP) packets, respectively. In this paper, we focus on the IPv4–IPv6 translation for RTP packets, which is the bottleneck of VoIP performance. Specifically, we developed a TrGW called National Information and Communications Initiative (NICI)‐TrGW. In NICI‐TrGW, we perform IPv4–IPv6 translation at the Linux kernel and adjust the header room of kernel‐level packet buffer for each packet to reduce memory‐copy operations. We evaluate the performance of NICI‐TrGW and the existing solutions by using the SmartBits. Our study indicates that NICI‐TrGW outperforms the existing solutions in terms of three different output measures including packet loss rate, maximum throughput, and average latency. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design issues and performance analysis for DSR routing with reclaim‐based caching in MANETs

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been positioned as one of the most important emerging wireless communication scenarios. Temporally formed by a collection of wireless mobile hosts, a MANET does not require the aid of any centralized administration. From this stems a suite of challenges in achieving an efficient MANET routing and content delivery in order to make the best use of precious resources and reduce the routing overhead at each MANET host. One of the reported approaches for solving the issue is the use of caching, which is expected to minimize the routing overhead by taking advantage of the limited memory at each mobile host. This paper introduces a novel scheme for addressing the above issue, called Reclaim‐Based Caching (RBC) policy, which dynamically utilizes a cache replacement mechanism of reclaiming stale routes to efficiently verify and validate a recoverable caching mechanism in Dynamic Source Routing. The main design purposes of RBC are to reduce the routing control overhead, lower the end‐to‐end routing delay, enhance the packet delivery ratio, and obtain a higher throughput for improving routing performance and accelerating the Route Discovery process due to low temporary link failure and high cache utilization. Hence, we can gather all feasible and historical route information into the cache library to be reclaimed as a threshold of efficient routing control. Consequently, the proposed RBC of this paper can be used in the universal wireless network environment to achieve better routing performance and to provide a more flexible real‐time application. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Low‐Complexity 128‐Point Mixed‐Radix FFT Processor for MB‐OFDM UWB Systems

In this paper, we present a fast Fourier transform (FFT) processor with four parallel data paths for multiband orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing ultra‐wideband systems. The proposed 128‐point FFT processor employs both a modified radix‐2⁴ algorithm and a radix‐2³ algorithm to significantly reduce the numbers of complex constant multipliers and complex booth multipliers. It also employs substructure‐sharing multiplication units instead of constant multipliers to efficiently conduct multiplication operations with only addition and shift operations. The proposed FFT processor is implemented and tested using 0.18 µm CMOS technology with a supply voltage of 1.8 V. The hardware‐ efficient 128‐point FFT processor with four data streams can support a data processing rate of up to 1 Gsample/s while consuming 112 mW. The implementation results show that the proposed 128‐point mixed‐radix FFT architecture significantly reduces the hardware cost and power consumption in comparison to existing 128‐point FFT architectures.     

Technologies and the development of the Automated Metadata Indexing and Analysis (AMIA) system

The Automated Metadata Indexing and Analysis (AMIA) project aims to provide an effective digital asset management (DAM) tool for large digital asset databases. We began with text-based indexing since it is still the most reliable approach as compared with other content-based media features. AMIA not only searches for the text of the file name, but also utilizes embedded information such as the metadata in Maya files. The AMIA system builds a linked map between all dependency files. We present an approach of preserving previously established metadata created by the old DAM tools, such as AlienBrain, and integrating them into the new system. Findings indicate that AMIA has significantly improved search performance comparing to previous DAM tools. Finally, the ongoing and future work in the AMIA project is described.     

A simple CMOS process compatible high performance parallel-stacked spiral inductor for advanced RF analog circuit applications

A high Q on-chip inductor with some unique structures has been fabricated with 0.13 μm CMOS compatible process for the first time. The unique structures including parallel stacked, line via between inter-metal layers, and use the top signal pad as the under path of the inductor instead of conventional bottom signal pad. These structures offer advantages of reducing resistance, high Q value, simple preparing process and small chip area. Experimental results show that the measured peak Q and peak-Q frequency can attain 7.06 and 1.8 GHz, respectively for the structure with four metal layers in parallel, 15 μm in metal width, 5.5 turns in wire number,and an area of 204×240 μm². The results have a better potential for advanced mobile communication applications.     

精密两维转镜的动力学仿真与控制误差分析

精密两维转镜作为激光角度欺骗干扰半实物仿真试验系统中模拟弹目、弹干扰视线运动的重要设备,其控制误差是影响视线运动模拟精度的重要因素,进而影响半实物仿真试验精度。以多体系统动力学方法推导了精密两维转镜的机电分析动力学模型,采用计算力矩法设计了两维转镜的轨迹跟踪控制器,并在Matlab/Simulink环境中对建立的反映转镜动态特性的数学模型进行了仿真,转镜方位、俯仰轴对等效正弦输入信号的角位置跟踪误差分别为2.2 mrad与3.5 mrad,结果表明:模型可实现对引导输入的角位置信号的高精度跟踪控制。     

开关电容式闭环微加速度计的稳定性研究

该文对开关电容式闭环微加速度计的系统稳定性进行了深入研究。提出了可通用于该类微传感系统的动态特性分析方法,并具体研究了传感器品质因子、力反馈延迟、电路补偿单元的参数多种因素对系统稳定性的影响。基于 CMOS工艺实现了一款接口电路芯片实例,实验结果表明,充分的电路补偿设计对于保证系统稳定性十分关键,实际的系统稳定边界与理论分析结果也较为吻合,从而证明了理论分析方法的正确性。