Hybridisation of LEDs with silicon microsensors

This paper presents the experiments we performed for hybrid integration of LEDs with silicon optical readout microsensors. LEDs were face down mounted, in a silicon cavity, on the same wafer with the sensor. The edge-emitted light is coupled into SiON waveguides. The LEDs hybridization steps were included in the technological processes of two types of silicon microsensors: chemo-optical and mechano-optical sensors. The proper technological steps succession was established according to the limitation imposed by lithography on wafers with deep groves and the thermal behavior of transducing layers. The main problem we solved was the matching of all the involved processes: integrated optics, micromachining, thin-film technology, CMOS technology.     

In vitro study of BSA gel/polyelectrolite complexes core shell microcapsules encapsulating doxorubicin for antitumoral targeted treatment

Abstract

The aim of this study is to develop core shell microcapsules of bovine serum albumin (BSA) gel with a complex polyelectrolite multilayer shell of natural polysaccharides with opposite charges, pectin (P), chitosan (Chi), and hyaluronic acid (HA) respectively, encapsulating Doxorubicin (Dox) as a carrier for targeted anti-tumoral treatment of hepatic cell carcinoma (HCC). A sacrificial CaCO₃ template method was used in order to obtain microcapsules with a BSA gel core and a layer-by-layer (Lbl) deposition technique of polyelectrolite complexes formed between P/Chi in the inner layers and HA/Chi in the outer shell layers. The preformed microcapsules, BSA gel/P/Chi/HA, noted as ms, have been applied for Dox encapsulation (ms-Dox). Dox encapsulation and release in different pH media were studied in order to elucidate the interactions between pH dependently charged species involved in the Dox loading/releasing processes. The structure characterization of ms/ms-Dox was evaluated by FTIR and UV-Vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermal analy sis, optical microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. The in vitro study for citotoxicity assessment on normal and tumoral cells of both ms and ms-Dox was performed using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and Hep2G HCC cell lines. Results of physical-chemical analyses confirm the successful encapsulation of Dox in ms, and the in vitro biological study recommends ms-Dox as a candidate for future in vivo research as a targeted anti-tumoral treatment modality applications.     

Calcium carbonate and wood reinforced hybrid PVC composites

In this article, poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) sandwich‐structured hybrid composites with amorphous calcium carbonate and wood‐filled cores were obtained by compression molding. It has been determined that wood addition up to a weight ratio of 33% reported to the total filler amount is beneficial in improving both the inter‐filler and filler‐matrix interfacial adhesion, which alongside with the promoting of the amorphous PVC matrix crystallization is responsible for an increase up to 34% in the flexural strength of the composites, compared to unfilled PVC. The hybrid filled composites present up to 35% lower friction coefficients and up to 20% higher Brinell hardness values than the composites filled with calcium carbonate alone. Subsequently, wood addition determines an increase in the oxidation onset temperature for PVC and an increase with up to 20% in the sound and thermal‐insulative properties of the composites, compared to unfilled PVC. The dominating dispersive part of the composites surface energy aids in improving the mass and dimensional stability of the assembly to both water and dilute hydrochloric acid aqueous solutions. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135, 46317.     

Building and evaluating resources for sentiment analysis in the Greek language

Sentiment lexicons and word embeddings constitute well-established sources of information for sentiment analysis in online social media. Although their effectiveness has been demonstrated in state-of-the-art sentiment analysis and related tasks in the English language, such publicly available resources are much less developed and evaluated for the Greek language. In this paper, we tackle the problems arising when analyzing text in such an under-resourced language. We present and make publicly available a rich set of such resources, ranging from a manually annotated lexicon, to semi-supervised word embedding vectors and annotated datasets for different tasks. Our experiments using different algorithms and parameters on our resources show promising results over standard baselines; on average, we achieve a 24.9% relative improvement in F-score on the cross-domain sentiment analysis task when training the same algorithms with our resources, compared to training them on more traditional feature sources, such as n-grams. Importantly, while our resources were built with the primary focus on the cross-domain sentiment analysis task, they also show promising results in related tasks, such as emotion analysis and sarcasm detection.     

Motivations and implications of veins theory: a discussion of discourse cohesion

The paper deals with the cohesion part of a model of global discourse interpretation, usually known as Veins Theory (VT). By taking the notion of nuclearity (though ignoring relations), from the Rhetorical Structure Theory, VT computes strings of discourse units, called veins, from which domains of accessibility can be determined for each discourse unit. VT’s constructs best fit with an incremental view on discourse processing. Linguistic observations that lead to the elaboration of the theory are presented. Cognitive aspects like short-term memory and on-line summarization are explained in terms of VT’s constructs. Complementary remarks are made on anaphora and its resolution in relation with the interpretation of discourse.     

Collagen immobilization on polyethylene terephthalate surface after helium plasma treatment

An attractive alternative to add new functionalities such as biocompatibility due to the micro- and nano-scaled modification of polymer surfaces is offered by plasma processing. Many vital processes of tissue repair and growth following injuries depend on the rate of adsorption and self-assembling of the collagen molecules at the interfaces. Consequently, besides the amount of protein, it is necessary to investigate the form in which the collagen molecules are organizing on the polymer surface. In this study, direct current (DC) helium plasma treatment was used in order to obtain poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) films with different amounts of collagen and different shapes of aggregates formed from the collagen molecules. The immobilization of collagen on PET surface was confirmed by XPS measurements, an increase of the nitrogen content by increasing the plasma exposure time being recorded. The SEM and AFM measurements revealed the presence of grains and dendrites of collagen formed on the polymer surface. At 15 min plasma treatment time, the polymer surface after collagen immobilization has a homogenous topography. Usually, one can find fibrils, coil or dendrimers of collagen formed in buffer solutions and immobilized on different polymer surfaces. On the other hand, in this particular configuration, the combination of DC plasma and helium gas as a PET functionalization tool is an original one. As the collagen is not covalently immobilized on the surfaces, it may interact with the cell culture medium proteins, part of the collagen might being replaced by other serum proteins.     

Cutting Performance and Wear Mechanism of Multilayer Diamond-Coated Tools

Monolayer and multilayer diamond films are deposited on WC-Co cemented carbide by hot-filament chemical vapor deposition. The growth characteristics of diamond coatings are analyzed. Cutting performance characteristics such as tool life and the stability of machining process in the machining of presintered ZrO₂ are compared based on the variation of cutting speed and resultant cutting force, and workpiece surface roughness. For the monolayer diamond coatings, as the concentration of CH₄ increases from 1% to 5%, the diamond crystal is transformed from micron columnar crystal to nanocluster crystal. The multilayer diamond coatings combine the advantages of micron- and nanocrystalline structures. The multilayer diamond-coated tool exhibits longer service life and better machining quality. Because of the appearance of the brittle–plastic conversion mechanism, the surface integrity of ZrO₂ processed by multilayer diamond-coated tool is relatively high. As for the uncoated tool, the workpiece is mainly machined by brittle spalling. The interfacial stratified fracture system between the interlayers is proposed to be the toughening mechanism of the multilayer structure.     

Surface energy evaluation of casting and nanofiber polyurethane films by using different models

The components of the surface free energy (SFE) were determined from static contact angle measurements of five liquids using different methods. The two manufacturing techniques (casting and electrospinning) applied to obtain polyurethane (PU) membranes give surfaces with different wetting properties. The SFE data varied and were strongly dependent on calculations methods and liquids that were used for contact angle measurements. As a whole, the SFE of electrospun PU membrane (PU-N) (~24 mN/m) was slightly higher than that of casting PU membrane (PU-F) (~18 mN/m) with similar chemical compositions. The overall increase in the value of SFE is mainly due to the microstructures with increased surface area and modulations of nanofibers. The results evidence the impact of the PU membrane preparation on the properties of the biomaterial surface. Such structure–properties–function relationship is necessary to lay the groundwork for establishing a set of design criteria to guide the fabrication of synthetic materials.     

Tunable Fabry-Perot surface micromachined interferometer-experiments and modeling

We present an optical tunable Fabry-Perot micromachined interferometer. The device is monolithically integrated with a p⁺-n photodiode on a silicon substrate, providing an adequate positioning of the photonic and microoptical components. The Fabry-Perot micro-interferometer consists of two parallel mirrors and lets the light with a particular wavelength pass through. The wavelength depends on the gap between the mirrors. We can change the gap of the micro-mechanical Fabry-Perot interferometer by applying a voltage to the mirrors, an electrostatic force inducing an attraction between the substrate and the top mirror. A simulation of the mechanical behavior was performed based on finite elements, using CoventorWare software. The method included an electro-mechanical simulation for a square parallel plate actuation with four connecting beams. The finite elements method (FEM) simulations of the device (the Fabry-Perot tunable filter) are performed for optimizing the design parameters in order to model the overall system performance, both the steady-state behavior and dynamic response.