Film Flip and Transfer Process to Enhance Light Harvesting in Ultrathin Absorber Films on Specular Back‐Reflectors

Optical interference is used to enhance light–matter interaction and harvest broadband light in ultrathin semiconductor absorber films on specular back‐reflectors. However, the high‐temperature processing in oxygen atmosphere required for oxide absorbers often degrades metallic back‐reflectors and their specular reflectance. In order to overcome this problem, a newly developed film flip and transfer process is presented that enables high‐temperature processing without degradation of the metallic back‐reflector and without the need of passivation interlayers. The film flip and transfer process improves the performance of photoanodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting comprising ultrathin (<20 nm) hematite (α‐Fe₂O₃) films on silver–gold alloy (90 at% Ag–10 at% Au) back‐reflectors. Specular back‐reflectors are obtained with high reflectance below hematite films, which is necessary for maximizing the productive light absorption in the hematite film and minimizing nonproductive absorption in the back‐reflector. Furthermore, the film flip and transfer process opens up a new route to attach thin film stacks onto a wide range of substrates including flexible or temperature sensitive materials.     

Development and Evaluation of Hybrid Artificial Neural Network Architectures for Modeling Spatio-Temporal Groundwater Fluctuations in a Complex Aquifer System

Water Resources Management - The proper design, development, and appropriate tuning of the Hybrid Neural Network architecture, mainly for its parsimoniousity and optimal training can help...     

An ensemble tree-based machine learning model for predicting the uniaxial compressive strength of travertine rocks

Neural Computing and Applications - Estimating the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of travertine rocks with an indirect modeling approach and machine learning algorithms is useful as models can...     

COACT: a query interface language for collaborative databases

Data curation activities in collaborative databases mandate that collaborators interact until they converge and agree on the content of their data. In a previous work, we presented a cloud-based collaborative database system that promotes and enables collaboration and data curation scenarios. Our system classifies different versions of a data item to either pending, approved, or rejected. The approval or rejection of a certain version is done by the database Principle Investigators (or PIs) based on its value. Our system also allows collaborators to view the status of each version and help PIs take decisions by providing feedback based on their experiments and/or opinions. Most importantly, our system provided mechanisms for history tracking of different versions to trace the modifications and approval/rejection done by both collaborators and PIs on different versions of a data item. We labeled our system as Update-Pending-Approval model (or UPA). In this paper, we describe a high level SQL query interface language for PIs and collaborators to interact with the UPA framework. We define a set of UPA keywords that are used as a part of the history tracking mechanism to select specific versions of a data item, and a set of UPA options that select specific versions based on possible future decisions of PIs. We implemented our query interface mechanism on top of Apache Phoenix, taking into consideration that the UPA system was implemented on top of Apache HBase. We test the performance of the UPA query language by executing several queries that contain different complexity levels and discuss their results.     

A deep learning based approach to detect IDC in histopathology images

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Breast cancer is one of the widespread reasons of morbidity worldwide that begins in the cells of the tissues of morbidity worldwide in the woman community....     

国际绿色生态建筑评价方法介绍与分析

本文介绍了当今国际绿色生态建筑评价的一般内容与方法, 并分析了四个具有代表性的绿色生态建筑评价体系。     

Reduced-order preconditioning for bidomain simulations

Simulations of the bidomain equations involve solving large, sparse, linear systems of the form Ax = b. Being an initial value problems, it is solved at every time step. Therefore, efficient solvers are essential to keep simulations tractable. Iterative solvers, especially the preconditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method, are attractive since memory demands are minimized compared to direct methods, albeit at the cost of solution speed. However, a proper preconditioner can drastically speed up the solution process by reducing the number of iterations. In this paper, a novel preconditioner for the PCG method based on system order reduction using the Arnoldi method (A-PCG) is proposed. Large order systems, generated during cardiac bidomain simulations employing a finite element method formulation, are solved with the A-PCG method. Its performance is compared with incomplete LU (ILU) preconditioning. Results indicate that the A-PCG estimates an approximate solution considerably faster than the ILU, often within a single iteration. To reduce the computational demands in terms of memory and run time, the use of a cascaded preconditioner was suggested. The A-PCG was applied to quickly obtain an approximate solution, and subsequently a cheap iterative method such as successive overrelaxation (SOR) is applied to further refine the solution to arrive at a desired accuracy. The memory requirements are less than those of direct LU but more than ILU method. The proposed scheme is shown to yield significant speedups when solving time evolving systems.     

Bioluminescence DNA hybridization assay for Plasmodium falciparum based on the photoprotein aequorin

A bioluminescence DNA hybridization assay for the detection of Plasmodium falciparum, the most deadly species of malaria, using the photoprotein aequorin as a bioluminescent label has been developed. The current gold standard for the detection of malaria is light microscopy, which can detect down to approximately 50 parasites/microL of blood, but has low-throughput, high costs, and requires high skill, which limit the applicability of the method, especially in the developing regions where malaria detection is mostly needed. The utilization of aequorin as a bioluminescence label offers the advantages of high signal-to-noise ratio and reliable detection down to attomole levels, allowing for the development of highly sensitive and miniaturized high-throughput bioluminescence assays. Herein, we developed a DNA hybridization assay for the detection of P. falciparum based on the competition between the target DNA and the signal generating DNA streptavidin-aequorin for hybridization with the probe DNA. This bioluminescence hybridization assay demonstrated a detection limit of 3 pg/microL and was employed for the detection of target DNA in standard and spiked human serum samples. The DNA hybridization assay was developed in a microplate format without the need for sample PCR amplification, showing the potential suitability of this method in the parallel analysis of samples by low-trained personnel, such as that typically encountered in developing regions.     

Interaction of Bacillus polymyxa with some oxide minerals with reference to mineral beneficiation and environmental control

Interaction of Bacillus polymyxa with calcite, hematite, corundum and quartz resulted in significant surface chemical changes not only of the cells but also in the minerals. Both the cell surfaces as well as quartz particles were rendered more hydrophobic after mutual interaction, whilst the rest of the minerals exhibited enhanced hydrophilicity after interaction with the bacteria. The bacteria were also observed to be capable of dissolving calcite, hematite and corundum and biosorbing the dissolved metal ions to varying extents. An excess of polysaccharides could be observed on biotreated calcite, hematite and corundum while the predominance of a protein-based metabolic product was evident on quartz surfaces. The utility of bioprocessing in the beneficiation of the above minerals through bioflotation and bioflocculation is demonstrated.     

Issues and controversies in venous thromboembolism

The developmental expression of salivary glycoconjugates was investigated in the rat submandibular and sublingual glands by conventional and lectin histochemistry. By the time of the first differentiation of secretory structures, in spite of similar morphological features, a different histochemical reactivity was detected, accounting for a relevant content of neutral glycoconjugates in the submandibular gland and the occurrence of both neutral and acidic glycoconjugates in the sublingual one. The use of lectins allowed the main changes of secretory components to be noted around gestational day 18. DBA and WGA lectins seemed to act as pre- and post-natal development markers while Con A lectin was indicative of post-natal differentiation. Taken together, data from lectin histochemistry indicated the transitional occurrence of glycoconjugates, probably involved in temporally restricted functions, as well as the co-existence of different secretory components that might also reflect maturational changes of single products.