Large scale production of indium antimonide film for position sensors in automobile engines

We use low pressure MOVPE to grow indium antimonide films on groups of eight 3 inch GaAs wafers per run. The films are used for the production of magnetoresistive position sensors for the car industry. To meet the narrow specifications for automotive components, the standard deviation of the sheet resistivity, and the thickness of the films have been reduced below 1.5%. This uniformity is the result of an optimization process encompassing the determination of the best susceptor temperature and the optimum flow. The gas velocity was found to have a large impact on the uniformity of the layers. Rotation of the wafers and the use of an optimum gas velocity results in extremely uniform layers.     

Catalytic pyrolysis and kinetic study of real-world waste plastics: multi-layered and mixed resin types of plastics

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Multi-layered and mixed resin types of plastics are a great challenge for the waste recycling industry. The majority consist of two or more types of...     

Eating quality of meat from pigs given the beta-adrenergic agonist salbutamol

Meat from pigs given the beta-adrenergic agonist Salbutamol was assessed by a trained taste panel. Overall, there were no significant effects of Salbutamol on panel scores for pork flavour, foreign flavour or overall acceptability. Although the differences were also not significant, meat from treated pigs was rated slightly tougher (P = 0·10) but more juicy (P = 0·14) than that from untreated animals. This concurred with higher instrumental values for toughness although the correlation between taste panel and instrumental texture measurements was low (r = 0·36, P < 0·001).     

Tracer monitored titrations: measurement of dissolved oxygen

The tracer monitored titration (TMT) technique is evaluated for measurement of dissolved oxygen. The TMT developed in this work uses a simple apparatus consisting of a low-precision pump for titrant delivery and an optical detector based on a white LED and two photodiodes with interference filters. It is shown that the classic Winkler method can be made free of routine volumetric and gravimetric measurements by application of TMT theory, which allows tracking the amounts of titrant and sample using a chemical tracer. The measurement precision of the prototype setup was 0.3% RSD.     

Tenascin-C expression in human epidermal keratinocytes is regulated by inflammatory cytokines and a stress response pathway

Melanin pigments in lower vertebrates are often found in locations other than the skin, thus forming an extracutaneous pigmentary system of unknown function. The cellular and biochemical structure of this system is still poorly characterized. This paper deals with the ultrastructural and biochemical features of the melanogenic system of Xenopus laevis. Melanin containing cells were identified in the dorsal and ventral skin, and in the lung, spleen, liver and connective tissue surrounding blood vessels. The pigment cells in the skin and the lungs appeared to be typical melanocytes. The spleen contained isolated melanocyte-like cells, but most of the pigment cells present in this organ were associated with melanomacrophage centers. Conversely, the liver appeared devoid of melanocytes and only displayed melanomacrophage centers. Tyrosinase activity was found in all pigment-containing organs except the liver. All organs containing tyrosinase activity also displayed melanin formation potential from L-tyrosine. Therefore, tyrosine hydroxylase and melanin formation activities could be detected only in those organs containing typical melanocytes but not in locations such as the liver, where only melanomacrophages centers were found.     

A flexible mixed-signal image processing pipeline using 3D chip stacks

This work presents a highly flexible mixed-signal CMOS image sensor suitable for smart camera applications. These systems need to fit different constraints regarding power consumption, speed and quality, and the optimal compromise may differ depending on the application. Moreover, the best implementation of a desired image processing task may be in the analog or the digital domain, or even a combined computation. Different aspects starting from the image sensor and signal acquisition up to the pre-processing in analog and digital domain are investigated in this paper to optimize not just one part of the system, but the whole system altogether. Moreover, it is shown that analog processing algorithms can improve signal quality, processing speed and latency while being able to save power, which is important for real-time systems. In order to be able to carry out spatial operations, the state-of-the-art sensor is modified to be able to read out multiple pixels at the same time. This allows analog spatial filter operations which consume significantly less power. As an example, an averaging filter is described which needs less than 5.3 % of the power–time product of a digital implementation for one computation. To enhance data throughput and flexibility, 3D chip stacking is proposed to partition the sensor in smaller units and enable massively parallel processing.     

An optimal real-time digital processor for the electric activity of muscle

The electric activity of muscle generates a biologic signal that can be used to estimate muscle force. However, large-amplitude, low-frequency variations are frequently superimposed on estimates of muscle force that are based on myoelectric signals. Conventional myoelectric signal processors reduce this "noise" component by simple filtering, which adversely affects the speed of response of the force estimate. Based on a novel algorithm for processing raw myoelectric signals that optimally reduce these random fluctuations, a new myoelectric signal processor was developed with hardware-assisted digital microprocessor technology; two sets of four differential electrodes are sampled at a rate of 1 kHz to generate two independent estimates of muscle force. Use of this processor resulted in an almost fivefold improvement in precision of force estimate compared with estimates obtained from the conventional myoelectric processor. If the new device were reprogrammed slightly, the speed of response achieved could be as much as 20 times greater than that of the conventional analog processor.     

Fast image processing for optical metrology utilizing heterogeneous computer architectures

Industrial image processing tasks, especially in the domain of optical metrology, are becoming more and more complex. While in recent years standard PC components were sufficient to fulfill the requirements, special architectures have to be used to build high-speed image processing systems today. For example, for adaptive optical systems in large scale telescopes, the latency between capturing an image and steering the mirrors is critical for the quality of the resulting images. Commonly, the applied image processing algorithms consist of several tasks with different granularities and complexities. Therefore, we combined the advantages of multicore CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs to build a heterogeneous image processing pipeline for adaptive optical systems by presenting new architectures and algorithms. Each architecture is well-suited to solve a particular task efficiently, which is proven by a detailed evaluation. With the developed pipeline it is possible to achieve a high throughput and to reduce the latency of the whole steering system significantly.     

Promising near-infrared non-targeted probes: benzothiazole heptamethine cyanine dyes

A series of benzothiazole heptamethine cyanine dyes have been synthesized and their photophysical properties evaluated in relation to their structural features. These have been compared against two classical probes of this type: Indocyanine Green (IGC) and New Indocyanine Green (IR-820). Growth inhibitory studies were also performed using a eukaryotic, unicellular organism, fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Herein we highlight some potentially interesting candidates with improved fluorescence quantum yields when compared with ICG and IR-820.     

Use of Bacteriophages to Control Salmonella in Experimentally Contaminated Sprout Seeds

ABSTRACT: Trials were conducted to evaluate the potential for using bacteriophages to control Salmonella in sprouting seeds. Two phages (Phage-A, capable of lysing S. Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis , and Phage-B, capable of lysing S. Montevideo) were isolated and characterized as members of the Myoviridae and Siphoviridae families, respectively. Salmonella counts increased in all inoculated seeds during soaking and mustard seeds supported greater growth of the inoculated Salmonella than broccoli seeds. A 1.37 log suppression of Salmonella growth was achieved by applying Phage-A on mustard seeds. The mixture of Phage-A and Phage-B caused a 1.50 log suppression of Salmonella growth in the soaking water of broccoli seeds. Host specificity observed in the study stresses the importance of developing phage mixtures that can control a broad range of potential contaminants.