A physical and scalable I-V model in BSIM3v3 for analog/digitalcircuit simulation

A new physical and continuous BSIM (Berkeley Short-Channel IGFET Model) I-V model in BSIM3v3 is presented for circuit simulation. Including the major physical effects in state-of-the art MOS devices, the model describes current characteristics from subthreshold to strong inversion as well as from the linear to the saturation operating regions with a single I-V expression, and guarantees the continuities of I_ds, conductances and their derivatives throughout all V_gs, V_ds, and T_bs, bias conditions. Compared with the previous BSIM models, the improved model continuity enhances the convergence property of the circuit simulators. Furthermore, the model accuracy has also been enhanced by including the dependencies of geometry and bias of parasitic series resistances, narrow width, bulk charge, and DIBL effects. The new model has the extensive built-in dependencies of important dimensional and processing parameters (e.g., channel length, width, gate oxide thickness, junction depth, substrate doping concentration, etc.). It allows users to accurately describe the MOSFET characteristics over a wide range of channel lengths and widths for various technologies, and is attractive for statistical modeling. The model has been implemented in the circuit simulators such as Spectre, Hspice, SmartSpice, Spice3e2, and so on     

Nonlinear adaptive IIR digital filter for linear system modeling

The structure and adaptive algorithm of a nonlinear adaptive IIR digital filter is presented. It does not need stability monitoring in the adaptive process, which has always been a computational burden and disturbs the adaptive process in linear adaptive IIR filtering. The individual parameter adaptation scheme is incorporated into the adaptive algorithm to optimally adjust each parameter at every iteration to improve convergence speed. Simulation results are conducted for linear IIR system modeling     

Reactivity of hydrolysed coals in liquefaction

A hvA bituminous, a subbituminous and a lignite coal have been hydrolysed by 20–30% aqueous caustic solution at 100–300 °C and total pressure from ambient to 8.3 MPa (1200 psi). Reactivity of these pretreated coals toward liquefaction has been examined. The conversion to benzene-soluble material (BS) and oil increases, and the preasphaltene and char residue decreases after pretreatment. Improvement in the conversion to the BS fraction is only marginal for the pretreated bituminous coal, but substantial for the low-rank coals. For the subbituminous coal, the liquefaction reactivity (conversion to BS) increases with the severity of hydrolysis pretreatment. Analyses of chemical compositions, ¹H n.m.r. nuclei distributions and hydroxyl concentrations of the acid-insoluble hydrolysis coal extracts indicate that both O and S are enriched in the extracts with half of the oxygen atoms being in hydroxyl forms. The hydroxyl concentrations of the extracts (acid-insoluble) are ≈2 to 3 times higher than their parent coals. Coal activation by this alkali pretreatment is explained by the hydrolytic attacks on ether C–O linkages, and the removal of some constituents rich in oxygen functional groups which are responsible for poor liquefaction behaviour.     

Farnesyl diphosphate-based inhibitors of Ras farnesyl protein transferase

The rational design, synthesis, and biological activity of farnesyl diphosphate (FPP)-based inhibitors of the enzyme Ras farnesyl protein transferase (FPT) is described. Compound 3, wherein a beta-carboxylic phosphonic acid type pyrophosphate (PP) surrogate is connected to the hydrophobic farnesyl group by an amide linker, was found to be a potent (I50(FPT) = 75 nM) and selective inhibitor of FPT, as evidenced by its inferior activity against squalene synthetase (I50(SS) = 516 microM) and mevalonate kinase (I50(MK) = > 200 microM). A systematic structure-activity relationship study involving modifications of the farnesyl group, the amide linker, and the PP surrogate of 3 was undertaken. Both the carboxylic and phosphonic acid groups of the beta-carboxylic phosphonic acid PP surrogate are essential for activity, since deletion of either group results in 50-2600-fold loss in activity (6-9, I50 = 4.6-220 microM). The farnesyl group also displays very stringent requirements and does not tolerate one carbon homologation (12, I50 = 17.7 microM), substitution by a dodecyl fragment (14, I50 = 9 microM), or introduction of an extra methyl group at the allylic position (18, I50 = 55 microM). Modifications around the amide linker group of 3 were more forgiving, as evidenced by the activity of N-methyl analog (21, I50 = 0.53 microM), the one carbon atom shorter farnesoic acid-derived retroamide analog (32, I50 = 250 nM), and the exact retroamide analog (49, I50 = 50 nM). FPP analogs such as 3, 32, and 49 are novel, potent, selective, small-sized, nonpeptidic inhibitors of FPT that may find utility as antitumor agents.     

An EBIC equation for solar cells

When an electron beam of a scanning electron microscope (SEM) impinges on an N-P junction, the generation of electron-hole pairs by impact ionization causes a characteristic short circuit current I_SC to flow. The I_SC, i.e. EBIC (electron beam induced current) depends strongly on the configuration used to investigate the cell's response. In this paper we consider the case where the plane of the junction is perpendicular to the surface. An EBIC equation amenable to numerical computations is derived as a function of cell thickness, source depth, surface recombination velocity, diffusion length, and distance of the junction to the beam-cell interaction point for a cell with an ohmic contact at its back surface. It is shown that the EBIC equation presented here is more general and easier to use than those previously reported. The effects of source depth, ohmic contact, and diffusion length on the normalized EBIC characteristic are discussed.     

Cobalt Covalent Doping in MoS2 to Induce Bifunctionality of Overall Water Splitting

The layer‐structured MoS₂ is a typical hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) electrocatalyst but it possesses poor activity for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In this work, a cobalt covalent doping approach capable of inducing HER and OER bifunctionality into MoS₂ for efficient overall water splitting is reported. The results demonstrate that covalently doping cobalt into MoS₂ can lead to dramatically enhanced HER activity while simultaneously inducing remarkable OER activity. The catalyst with optimal cobalt doping density can readily achieve HER and OER onset potentials of ?0.02 and 1.45 V (vs reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE)) in 1.0 m KOH. Importantly, it can deliver high current densities of 10, 100, and 200 mA cm^?2 at low HER and OER overpotentials of 48, 132, 165 mV and 260, 350, 390 mV, respectively. The reported catalyst activation approach can be adapted for bifunctionalization of other transition metal dichalcogenides.     

Factors dominating individual information disseminating behavior on social networking sites

Identifying dominating features that affect individual information retweeting behavior on social networking sites (SNSs) is crucial to understanding individual retweeting behaivor and developing effective marketing strategies on SNS. However, there is little agreement on what factors are dominating individual information disseminating behavior on SNS, and what’s worse, more and more factors are added into the prediction model, without examining the relevance of them and even why these factors are added is rarely discussed. This leads to undesirable outcomes such as increasing the cost of measuring and computing irrelevant/redundant features. Most importantly, it hinders us from understanding what discriminative features are affecting individual information disseminating behavior. Using a unique real-life Twitter data set consisting of 55,575 twitterers and 9,440,321 tweets, the authors examine what discriminative features are dominating individual information disseminating behavior. The results indicate that topic distance is the most discriminative factor, highlighting that self-presentation motives play an important role in information disseminating decisions. Besides, the amount of information, social relationship and the popularity of the tweet also contribute to individual information disseminating decisions. Experiments demonstrate that adopting only dominating factors can improve prediction performance in terms of various indicators, compared with adopting the full features set. Finally, we conclude the paper by discussing theoretical and practical implications of our findings.     

Localized online learning-based control of a soft redundant manipulator under variable loading

ABSTRACT

Soft robots are inherently compliant and manoeuvrable manipulators that can passively adapt to their environment. However, in order to fully make use of their unique properties, accurate control should still be maintained when affected by external loading. Commonly used model-based approaches often have low tolerance to unmodelled loading, resulting in significant error when acted on by them. Therefore, in this study we employ a nonparametric learning-based method that can approximate and update the inverse model of a redundant two-segment soft robot in an online manner. The primary contribution of this work is the application and evaluation of the proposed framework on a redundant soft robot. With the addition of redundancy, a constrained optimization approach is taken to consistently resolve null-space behaviour. Through this control framework, the controller can continuously adapt to unknown external disturbances during runtime and maintain end-effector accuracy. The performance of the control framework was evaluated by tracking of a 3D trajectory with a static tip load, and a variable weight tip load. The results indicate that the proposed controller could effectively adapt to the disturbances and continue to track the desired trajectory accurately.