Ternary Blends of Renewable Fast Pyrolysis Bio-Oil,Advanced Bioethanol,and Marine Gasoil as Potential Marine Biofuel

An alternative for reducing emissions from marine fuel is to blend bio-oil from lignocellulose non-edible feedstocks to diesel fossil fuels. Phase diagrams of the ternary systems were built to represent the transition from heterogeneous regions to homogeneous regions. Four homogeneous blends of bio-oil of eucalyptus-bioethanol-marine gasoil were experimentally characterized with respect to the most important fuel parameters for marine engines: water content, flash point, low heating value, viscosity, and acidity. Blends with closer properties to marine gasoil replacement, lower costs, and environmental impacts should be tested for large engines.     

Near‐Infrared (NIR) Organic Light‐Emitting Diodes (OLEDs): Challenges and Opportunities

The rapid development of the science and technology of organic semiconductors has already led to mass application of organic light‐emitting diodes (OLEDs) in television monitors of outstanding quality as well as in a large variety of smaller displays found in smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets, while introduction of the technology to the illumination sector is imminent. Notably, the requirements of all such applications for emission in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum are well tuned to the optical and electronic properties of typical organic semiconductors, thereby representing relatively “low‐hanging fruits,” in terms of material development and exploitation. However, the question arises as to whether developing materials suited for efficient near‐infrared (NIR, 700–1000 nm) emission is possible, and, crucially, desirable to enable new classes of applications spanning from through‐space, short‐range communications to biomedical sensors, night vision, and more generally security applications to name but a few. Here, the major fundamental hurdles to be overcome to achieve efficient NIR emission from organic π‐conjugated systems are discussed, recent progress is reviewed, and an outlook for further development of both materials and applications is provided.     

Hierarchical micro-nanostructured albite-based glass-ceramic for high dielectric strength insulators

A novel glass-ceramic material based on albite type Na-rich feldspar has been synthesized by conventional ceramic process. High crystallinity, >94%?Vol.% is obtained by fast sintering which allows energy saving processing. Albite is the main crystalline phase and tetragonal SiO₂ is a secondary phase. Electrical properties were examined by complex impedance, DC measurements, and dielectric breakdown test. Dielectric characterization shows a non-Debye type dielectric behavior with low dielectric constant, 4.6 at 1?MHz, low dielectric losses, (～10^?3 at 1?MHz, and a large dielectric strength, ～60?kV/mm), that it is the largest value reported in ceramic insulators. Those dielectric properties are attained by the low glassy phase content in the samples and their unique micro-nanostructure. All these properties make this novel material a very promising candidate in the market of ceramic electrical insulator, highlighting for high-voltage applications.     

Polyynes from Submerged Electric Arc. IV. Hydrogenation to Ene-Ynes

The polyynes produced by the electric arc between graphite electrodes submerged in hexane are readily reduced to a mixture of polyenes and ene-ynes by a treatment with Zn dust and hydrochloric acid. Experimental evidences of this reduction reaction are presented by electronic absorption spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy, and HPLC analysis with diode-array detector. Some consequences of this simple passage from polyynes to ene-ynes are briefly discussed in a biochemical context.     

Intra- and inter-laboratory reproducibility of estrogen and progesterone receptor enzyme immunoassay in breast cancer cytosol samples--a Swedish multicenter study. Swedish Society of Cancer Study Group

Estrogen and progesterone receptor analysis results were compared within and between six laboratories in Sweden using frozen breast cancer cytosol samples, and the same technique (enzyme immunoassay, Abbott Laboratories). The concordance in receptor status (positive vs. negative) was excellent (98.4% (571/580)). The discordant results were attributable to values near cut-off (n = 4) or outliers (n = 5), the latter probably being due to analytical errors. One laboratory reported significantly higher ER concentrations than the others; thus caution should be observed when comparing absolute values from different centers. For PgR there were similar differences between the laboratories. However, the intra- and inter-laboratory differences were small compared with the overall variability in ER and PgR content between different samples in a large database. The range of the median intra-laboratory coefficient of variation was 11-23% for ER and 12-19% for PgR, indicating that there is room for improvement in the quality of assay performance.     

Generation of Technology-Independent Retargetable Analog Blocks

This paper introduces a complete methodology for retargeting of analog cells to different sets of specifications. This methodology is technology-independent, thus allowing the migration, from one technology to another, of the circuit under retargeting. Careful integration of the device sizing and layout generation tasks via the incorporation of layout constraints during the sizing process allows to generate fully functional designs in a few minutes. The methodology is illustrated via the retargeting of a fully-differential Miller-compensated two-stage operational amplifier for a new set of specifications and two different technological processes.An erratum to this article can be found at     

A Symbolic Pole/Zero Extraction Methodology Based on Analysis of Circuit Time-Constants

This paper introduces a methodology for symbolic pole/zero extraction based on the formulation of the time-constant matrix of the circuits. This methodology incorporates approximation techniques specifically devoted to achieve an optimum trade-off between accuracy and complexity of the symbolic root expressions. The capability to efficiently handle even large circuits will be demonstrated through several practical circuits.