Fermentation of rice using amylolytic Bifidobacterium

Twenty-two amylolytic bifidobacteria grown in BHI-starch media were compared for the amylase activity of the intra- and extra-cellular enzymes. The activity of the cells grown in the liquid medium differed considerably. Among the strains tested B. adolescentis Int57 and B. adolescentis ZS8 exhibited higher activities than others. In rice medium containing 0.05% -cysteine·HCl and 0.2% yeast extract, the amylolytic Bifidobacterium strains grew considerably better than non-amylolytic Bifidobacterium strains. B. adolescentis Int57, which showed highest growth and amylase activity in the rice medium, was chosen and rice fermentation was investigated. The titratable acidity (TA) reached 2.43 and pH decreased to 4.4 after 24 h fermentation. The relative ratio of acetic acid to lactic acid gradually decreased during fermentation. The concentration of reducing sugar and amylase activity gradually increased and reached 14 mg maltose equivalent/ml and 35 mU/ml min, respectively, in 24 h. The accumulated reducing sugar was mostly maltotriose. The layer-separation of fermented product was stabilized by the addition of 1% gelatin. It was suggested that amylolytic bifidobacteria may be used for the production of fermented rice products.     

Design of Millimeter Wave TFMS Bandpass Filter

In this paper, a Ka-band thin film microstrip line(TFMS) filter with multi-layer structure on silicon substrate is introduced. The simulated results show that it is possible to design compact millimeter-wave filter on silicon substrate with process compatible to current VLSI technology.     

Scalability study of the ad hoc on‐demand distance vector routing protocol

As mobile networking continues to experience increasing popularity, the need to connect large numbers of wireless devices will become more prevalent. Many recent proposals for ad hoc routing have certain characteristics that may limit their scalability to large networks. This paper examines five different combinations of modifications that may be incorporated into virtually any on‐demand protocol in order to improve its scalability. The scalability of current on‐demand routing protocols is evaluated through the selection of a representative from this class of protocols. The performance of the un‐modified on‐demand protocol is compared against that of it combined with each of the scalability modifications. Each scheme's behavior is analyzed in networks as large as 10,000 nodes through detailed simulation. Based on the observations, conclusions are drawn as to the expected scalability improvement that can be achieved by each modification. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trellis‐Based Decoding of High‐Dimensional Block Turbo Codes

This paper introduces an efficient iterative decoding method for high‐dimensional block turbo codes. To improve the decoding performance, we modified the soft decision Viterbi decoding algorithm, which is a trellis‐based method. The iteration number can be significantly reduced in the soft output decoding process by applying multiple usage of extrinsic reliability information from all available axes and appropriately normalizing them. Our simulation results reveal that the proposed decoding process needs only about 30% of the iterations required to obtain the same performance with the conventional method at a bit error rate range of 10^?5 to 10^?6.     

A Fully Integrated Thin‐Film Inductor and Its Application to a DC‐DC Converter

This paper presents a simple process to integrate thin‐film inductors with a bottom NiFe magnetic core. NiFe thin films with a thickness of 2 to 3 μm were deposited by sputtering. A polyimide buffer layer and shadow mask were used to relax the stress of the NiFe films. The fabricated double spiral thin‐film inductor showed an inductance of 0.49 μH and a Q factor of 4.8 at 8 MHz. The DC‐DC converter with the monolithically integrated thin‐film inductor showed comparable performances to those with sandwiched magnetic layers. We simplified the integration process by eliminating the planarization process for the top magnetic core. The efficiency of the DC‐DC converter with the monolithic thin‐film inductor was 72% when the input voltage and output voltage were 3.5 V and 6 V, respectively, at an operating frequency of 8 MHz.     

A Rigorous 2D Approximation Technique for 3D Waveguide Structures for BPM Calculations

We propose a rigorous 2D approximation technique for the 3D waveguide structures; it can minimize the well‐known approximation errors of the commonly used effective index method. The main concept of the proposed technique is to compensate for the effective cladding index in the equivalent slab model of the original channel waveguide from the modal effective index calculated by the nonuniform 2D finite difference method. With simulations, we used the proposed technique to calculate the coupling characteristics of a directional coupler by the 2D beam propagation method, and the results were almost exactly the same as the results calculated by the 3D beam propagation method.     

Performance analysis of opportunistic CSMA schemes in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we consider underlay cognitive radio (CR) networks where an amount of interference caused by secondary stations (STAs) has to be kept below a predefined level, which is called interference temperature. We propose opportunistic p-persistent carrier sense multiple access schemes for the CR networks, which opportunistically exploit wireless channel conditions in transmitting data to the secondary access point. We also devise an adaptive interference-level control technique to further improve quality-of-service of a primary network by limiting the excessive interference due to collisions among STAs. The performances of the proposed schemes are mathematically analyzed, and they are validated with extensive computer simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed schemes achieve near optimal throughput of the secondary network while they are backward-compatible to the conventional p-persistent CSMA scheme.     

Creating Atomic Ordering in Electrocatalysis

Catalysis always proceeds in a chaotic fashion. Therefore, identifying the working principles of heterogeneous catalysts is a challenging task. Creating atomic order in heterogeneous catalysts simplifies this task and also offers new opportunities for rationally designing active sites to manipulate catalytic performance. The recent rapid advances in heterogeneous electrocatalysis have led to exciting progress in the construction of atomically ordered materials. Here, the latest progress in electrocatalysts with the periodic atomic arrangement, including intermetallic compounds with long-range order and metal atom-array catalysts with short-range order is summarized. The synthesis principles and the intriguing physical and chemical properties of these electrocatalysts are discussed. Furthermore, the compelling prospects of atomically ordered catalysts in the frontier of catalyst research are outlined.     

Photomultiplication-Type Organic Photodetectors with High EQE-Bandwidth Product by Introducing a Perovskite Quantum Dot Interlayer

A photomultiplication (PM)-type organic photodetector (OPD) that exploits the ionic motion in CsPbI₃ perovskite quantum dots (QDs) is demonstrated. The device uses a QD monolayer as a PM-inducing interlayer and a donor–acceptor bulk heterojunction (BHJ) layer as a photoactive layer. When the device is illuminated, negative ions in the CsPbI₃ QD migrate and accumulate near the interface between the QDs and the electrode; these processes induce hole injection from the electrode and yield the PM phenomenon with an external quantum efficiency (EQE) >2000% at a 3 V applied bias. It is confirmed that the ionic motion of the CsPbI₃ QDs can induce a shift in the work function of the QD/electrode interface and that the dynamics of ionic motion determines the response speed of the device. The PM OPD showed a large EQE-bandwidth product >10⁶ Hz with a −3 dB frequency of 125 kHz at 3 V, which is one of the highest response speeds reported for a PM OPD. The PM-inducing strategy that exploits ionic motion of the interlayer is a potential approach to achieving high-efficiency PM OPDs.