Fabrication of 1.55 μm VCSELs on Si using metallic bonding

Using AuGeNiCr multilayered metals as the wafer bonding medium, long-wavelength GaInAsP/InP vertical cavity surface emitting lasers employing Al-oxide/Si as the upper and lower distributed Bragg reflectors were fabricated on Si substrate with the bonding interface formed outside the vertical cavity surface emitting laser cavity. Laser emission at 1.545 μm was measured under pulsed operations near room temperature. The low-temperature metallic bonding process demonstrates a great potential in device fabrication     

Revised cutoff values of serum aminotransferase in detecting viral hepatitis among CAPD patients: experience from Taiwan, an endemic area for hepatitis B

BACKGROUND: To determine the best cutoff values of aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine amino-transferase (ALT) in detecting viral hepatitis C infection among patients of continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). METHODS: 90 (44 male and 46 female) CAPD patients and 526 adult controls (266 male, 260 female) were enrolled. Serum AST and ALT were measured by an auto-analyser monthly. Serum HBsAg was examined using a RIA method and anti-HCV by an second-generation EIA method. The best cutoff values of AST and ALT for detecting viral hepatitis were obtained from the ROC (receiver-operating characteristic) curve. RESULTS: The prevalence of anti-HCV(+) was significantly higher in CAPD patients (16.7%) than in normal controls (4.9%), while that of HBsAg(+) was similar in both groups. CAPD patients had significantly lower levels of serum aminotransferases compared to normal controls. Mean AST were 23.8 IU/l in normal control and 18.8 IU/l in the CAPD patients (P < 0.001). Mean ALT were 21.9 IU/l in normal controls and 15.3 IU/l in the CAPD patients (P < 0.001). CAPD patients with HCV infection had higher serum AST and ALT levels than those without. However, HBV infection did not cause significant serum aminotransferase elevation in patients. The conventional cutoff values of AST (40 IU/l) and ALT (40 IU/l) for detecting viral hepatitis yielded only a sensitivity of 27.3 and 18.2% respectively; on the contrary, our revised cutoff values of AST (24 IU/l) and ALT (17 IU/l) had better sensitivities (AST, 72.7%; ALT, 63.6%). For serial aminotransferase values, the sensitivity of AST and ALT for detecting HCV were 36.4 and 27.3% by conventional criteria, and were both 81.8%, by our newly revised criteria. CONCLUSIONS: Serum aminotransferase cutoff values should be modified for screening viral hepatitis in a CAPD population. Our new cutoff criteria had important clinical implications in providing benefits of earlier detection and possible prevention from chronic hepatic deteriorations.     

Enhancement of islanding-detection of distributed generation systems via wavelet transform-based approaches

In this paper, a wavelet transform-based approach is proposed to detect the occurrence of islanding events in distributed generation systems. Thanks to time–frequency localization capabilities exhibited by wavelet transform, the approach embedded with this transform technique has grasped the appearance of the islanding event in a highly effective manner. Moreover, for those regions which are in need of a better visualization, the proposed approach would serve as an efficient aid such that the mains power disconnection can be better distinguished. To validate the feasibility of this approach, the method has been validated through several scenarios. Test results supported the effectiveness of the method for the application considered.     

Enhanced electron emission from phosphorus-doped diamond-cladsilicon field emitter arrays

Undoped and phosphorus (P)-doped diamond-clad Si field emitter arrays have been successfully fabricated using microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD) technology. The electron emission from the blunt diamond-clad microtips are much higher than those for the pure Si tips with sharp curvature due to a lower work function. Furthermore, the characteristics of emission current against applied voltage for the P-doped diamond-clad tips show superior emission at lower field to the undoped ones. After the examination of Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and electrical characteristics of as-grown diamond, such a significant enhancement of the electron emission from the P-doped diamond-clad tips is attributed to a higher electron conductivity and defect densities     

Parallel transport: a new transport layer paradigm for enabling Internet quality of service

The transport layer in the network protocol stack serves as a liaison between the application and the underlying network. Any quality of service provided by the network thus has to be effectively translated by the transport layer protocol in order to be enjoyed by the applications. In this article, we argue for a fundamental rethinking of the transport layer design to facilitate such QoS delivery. We identify the key requirement for a QoS enabling transport layer protocol as the ability to effectively handle multiplicity in terms of user differentiation levels, network resources, and service models. However, TCP, the transport layer protocol predominantly used in the Internet, is unable to support such multiplicity due to its single-state design. We extend TCP to a parallel transport layer protocol called parallel TCP (pTCP) that can tackle the different dimensions of multiplicity, and hence enable varying classes of QoS to applications. We discuss the applicability of pTCP in three specific domains with different levels of network support for QoS, and present simulation results substantiating our arguments.     

Conservatism of the gap metric

It is shown by way of simple examples that the gap metric may be inappropriate for quantifying the uncertainty for lightly damped systems, e.g. flexible structures such as spacecraft and aircraft. Two plants having otherwise identical transfer functions, except that their zeros on the imaginary axis are located slightly apart due to perturbations, are usually considered very close, i.e. their closed-loop characteristics under most stabilizing feedbacks are very similar. However, it is demonstrated that when the gap is used to quantify the plant perturbations, the computed gap may be large. Consequently, the stability of the perturbed plant with a stabilizing controller designed for the nominal plant cannot be guaranteed via the existing stability theorems using the gap metric