Determination of the interface energy level alignment of a doped organic hetero-junction using capacitance–voltage measurements

A simple method based on capacitance–voltage (C–V) measurements is reported to determine the interface energy level alignment at the junction of 15 mol% Cs₂CO₃ doped 4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (BPhen) and 1,4,5,8,9,11-hexaazatriphenylene hexacarbonitrile (HATCN) fabricated under high vacuum. The junction properties, such as the depletion layer thickness, built-in potentials and vacuum level shift were calculated with simple Mott–Schottky and Poisson’s equations with the boundary condition of a continuous electric flux density using the information from the C–V data. The interface energy level alignment determined by this method is well matched with the one determined using the in situ ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS) and X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) experiments performed under ultra-high vacuum. This method can be applied to other semiconductor junctions such as the organic p–n homojunctions and heterojunctions with known energy levels, as long as the metal/semiconductor contact is Ohmic without referring to the photoemission spectroscopies. Moreover, the energy level alignment determined by the C–V measurement gives a more realistic result since the films for the measurements are formed under high vacuum which is a normal device fabrication environment rather than under ultra high vacuum.     

Performance analysis of OFDMA uplink systems with symbol timing misalignment

This letter presents our investigation for the effect of symbol timing errors in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) uplink systems. We express the symbol timing errors between users as the symbol timing misalignments with respect to the desired user. Then, we derive an explicit expression of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as a function of the maximum value of the symbol timing misalignments. Analyses and simulation results show that, to achieve an SNR of 20 dB, the maximum value of the symbol timing misalignments must be less than the cyclic prefix duration plus 6.25% of the useful symbol duration. Based on the resulting SNR degradation, we evaluate the SNR gain with guard subcarriers in order to mitigate the effect of the symbol timing misalignments.     

Dynamic control plane management for software‐defined networks

Software‐defined network (SDN) is an emerging network paradigm that allows flexible network management by providing programmability from a separated control plane. Because of the centralized management scheme that SDN adopts, intensive control plane overhead incurs as the scale of SDN increases. The control plane overhead is mainly caused by a massive amount of control messages generated during data plane monitoring and reactive flow instantiation. By far, very few works have addressed the overhead issue on reaction flow instantiation; therefore, we mainly focus on alleviating such overhead in this work. To achieve this goal, we propose a new control plane management (CPMan) method. CPMan aims to realize the following two objectives: first, reduce the number of control messages exchanged through the control channel and second, evenly distribute the control workload across multiple controllers to mitigate the potential performance bottleneck. To realize the former, we propose a lightweight feedback loop‐based control scheme, whereas for the latter, we propose a dynamic switch‐to‐controller (DSC) placement scheme. To show the feasibility of our proposal, we implemented a prototype of the two proposed schemes on top of a carrier‐grade SDN controller and validated its performance in an emulated network. We achieved approximately 57.13% overhead reduction with feedback loop‐based control scheme, while achieved approximately 98.68% balance ratio with DSC placement scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biosynthetic approach for the production of new aminoglycoside derivative

Aminoglycoside antibiotics can be classified into two major groups; streptamine containing and 2-deoxystreptamine containing antibiotics. Here, we report a biosynthetic approach for the fusion of spectinomycin and kanamycin biosynthetic gene clusters to yield the new aminoglycoside derivative, oxykanamycinC, in a non-aminoglycoside producing heterologous host.     

A rapid method for the simultaneous determination of 25 anti-hypertensive compounds in dietary supplements using ultra-high-pressure liquid chromatography

A novel, stable, simple and specific ultra-performance liquid chromatography method with ultraviolet detection (205 nm) for the simultaneous analysis of 25 anti-hypertensive substances was developed. The method was validated according to the International Conference of Harmonisation guidelines with respect to linearity, accuracy, precision, limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantitation (LOQ) and stability. From the ultra-performance liquid chromatography results, we identified the LOD and LOQ of solid samples to be 0.20–1.00 and 0.60–3.00 μg ml^?1, respectively, while those of liquid samples were 0.30–1.20 and 0.90–3.60 μg ml^?1, respectively. The linearity exceeded 0.9999, and the intra- and inter-day precisions were 0.15–6.48% and 0.28–8.67%, respectively. The intra- and inter-day accuracies were 82.25–111.42% and 80.70–115.64%, respectively, and the stability was lower than 12.9% (relative standard deviation). This method was applied to the monitoring of 97 commercially available dietary supplements obtained in Korea, such as pills, soft capsules, hard capsules, liquids, powders and tablets. The proposed method is accurate, precise and of high quality, and can be used for the routine, reproducible analysis and control of 25 anti-hypertensive substances in various dietary supplements. The work presented herein may help to prevent incidents related to food adulteration and restrict the illegal food market.     

Rheology of Mixed Systems of Sweet Potato Starch and Galactomannans

The effect of galactomannans (guar gum and locust bean gum) at different concentrations (0, 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6%, w/w) on rheological properties of sweet potato starch (SPS) was studied. The flow behaviors of SPS‐galactomannan mixtures were determined from the rheological parameters of power law and Casson models. The SPS‐galactomannan mixtures had high shear‐thinning fluid characteristics (n = 0.30‐0.36) exhibiting yield stress at 25°C. The presence of galactomannans resulted in the increase in consistency index (K), apparent viscosity (η_a,100) and Casson yield stress (σ_oc). In the temperature range of 25‐70°C, the mixtures followed the Arrhenius temperature relationship. Dynamic rheological tests at 25°C indicated that the SPS‐galactomannan mixtures had weak gel‐like behavior with storage moduli (G′) higher than loss moduli (G") over most of the frequency range (0.63‐62.8 rad/s) with frequency dependency. The magnitudes of dynamic moduli (G′, G" and η*) of the SPS‐galactomannan mixtures were higher than those of the control (0% gum), and increased with an increase in gum concentration. The tan δ (ratio of G"/G′) values (0.41‐0.46) of SPS‐guar gum mixtures were much lower than those (0.50‐0.63) of SPS‐locust bean gum mixtures, indicating that there was a more pronounced effect of guar gum on the elastic properties of SPS.     

Reduction of rutin loss in buckwheat noodles and their physicochemical characterisation

Tartary buckwheat was subjected to hydrothermal treatments for minimising rutin loss in buckwheat-based foods by water addition. When native buckwheat flour was mixed with water for 60 min, the rutin content was distinctly reduced from 3.74 g/100 g to 0.31 g/100 g, increasing the amount of quercetin. However, the rutin content remained constant and quercetin was hardly detected in hydrothermally-treated buckwheat flour. Also, when noodles were prepared with wheat and buckwheat flours (7:3, w/w), the noodle samples containing hydrothermally-treated buckwheat flour, showed higher amounts of rutin (more than 0.83 g/100 g) than the control noodle with native buckwheat flour (0.27 g/100 g). In addition, the use of hydrothermally-treated buckwheat flour gave less pasting parameters and lower viscoelastic properties. The noodle dough with hydrothermally-treated buckwheat flour also had greater water absorption and development time during mixing while the elongation stress of the noodle dough was reduced.