Metabolic-heat relation for aerobic yeast respiration and fermentation

A specially developed temperature control system on a laboratory scale fermenter enabled continuous measurement of the rate of heat production during undisturbed growth of microbial cultures. Apart from being correlated with oxygen uptake rate, the heat of fermentation was established as an additional indicator of metabolic activity. The ‘aerobic respiration’ energetic activity of Candida utilis, Candida lipolytica and Saccharomyces cerevisiae on different carbon substrates was investigated with cultures of the latter species being also studied under the ‘aerobic fermentation’ conditions induced by glucose catabolite repression.     

A study of solid circulation rate in a circulating fluidized bed

An experimental investigation under cold condition was made to study the effects of some operating/design parameters and non-mechanical L valve configuration on the solid circulation rate in a 4.5 m tall, 0.15 m diameter circulating fluidized bed with riser flow rate varying from 1400 litres/min to 2000 litres/min and bed inventory from 15 kg to 25 kg of sand of average sizes 200 μm, 400 μm and 500 μm. Solid circulation rate was estimated by measuring velocity of sand particle travelling through a vertical Perspex tube section at the bottom of the return leg. It was found to be in the range of 2.8 to 12.3kg/m²s, 0.07 to 9.1kg/m²s and 0.12 to 2.23kg/m²s for sand sizes of 200 μm, 400 μm and 500 μm, respectively for a horizontal L valve. Two mathematical correlations have been developed from the experimental results to predict solid circulation rate as a function of riser flow rate, aeration flow rate, total bed inventory and particle size used.     

An integrated system for process planning and cost estimation in hole making

The process planning function plays a critical role not only in computer integrated manufacture, but also in the economics of batch manufacturing. This paper describes the development of a generic knowledge-based system for process planning and cost estimation in the hole making process. The main function of the system, besides estimating the cost of production, is to recommend appropriate processes, their sequence and their respective machining conditions in order to obtain the required product specifications. The system has been implemented in a manufacturing organisation. The results obtained have indicated that in addition to cost savings the system also preserves the consistency in planning and cost estimation.     

A 1-V 3.5-mW CMOS switched-opamp quadrature IF circuitry for Bluetooth receivers

A 1-V switched-capacitor (SC) quadrature IF circuitry for Bluetooth receivers is demonstrated using switched-opamp technique. To achieve double power efficiency while maintaining low sensitivity to finite opamp gain effects for the SC IF circuitry, half-delay integrator-based filters and /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator have been proposed. The proposed quadrature IF circuitry employs a seventh-order IF filter for channel selection and a third-order /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator for analog-to-digital conversion. A noise-shaping extension technique is employed to enhance the resolution of the low-pass /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator by 16 dB while operating at the same oversampling ratio and power consumption. At a 1-V supply, the quadrature IF circuitry achieves a measured IIP3 of -3 dBm at a nominal gain of 24 dB with a 48-dB variable gain control while consuming a total power dissipation of 3.5 mW.     

A 2 V 1.8 GHz fully integrated CMOS dual-loop frequency synthesizer

A 2 V 1.8 GHz fully integrated CMOS dual-loop frequency synthesizer is designed in a standard 0.5 /spl mu/m digital CMOS process for wireless communication. The voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) required for the low-frequency loop is designed using a ring-type VCO and achieves a tuning range of 89% from 356 to 931 MHz and a phase noise of -109.2 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from 856 MHz. With an active chip area of 2000/spl times/1000 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ and at a 2 V supply voltage, the whole synthesizer achieves a tuning range from 1.8492 to 1.8698 GHz in 200 kHz steps with a measured phase noise of -112 dBc/Hz at 600 kHz offset from 1.86 GHz. The measured settling time is 128 /spl mu/s and the total power consumption is 95 mW.     

A 1-V 10.7-MHz switched-opamp bandpass /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator using double-sampling finite-gain-compensation technique

A 1 V switched-capacitor (SC) bandpass sigma-delta (/spl Sigma//spl Delta/) modulator is realized using a high-speed switched-opamp (SO) technique with a sampling frequency of up to 50 MHz, which is improved ten times more than prior 1 V SO designs and comparable to the performance of the state-of-the-art SC circuits that operate at much higher supply voltages. On the system level, a fast-settling double-sampling SC biquadratic filter architecture is proposed to achieve high-speed operation. A low-voltage double-sampling finite-gain-compensation technique is employed to realize a high-resolution /spl Sigma//spl Delta/ modulator using only low-DC-gain opamps to maximize the speed and to reduce power dissipation. On the circuit level, a fast-switching methodology is proposed for the design of the switchable opamps to achieve a switching frequency up to 50 MHz. Implemented in a 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS process (V/sub TP/=0.82 V and V/sub TN/=0.65 V) and at 1 V supply, the modulator achieves a measured peak signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR) of 42.3 dB at 10.7 MHz with a signal bandwidth of 200 kHz, while dissipating 12 mW and occupying a chip area of 1.3 mm/sup 2/.     

Long-wavelength 256×256 GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well infraredphotodetector (QWIP) palm-size camera

A 9 μm cutoff 256×256 palm-size quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) camera weighing only 2.5 lbs, and using 5.5 W of power has been demonstrated. Excellent imagery, with a noise equivalent differential temperature (NEΔT) of 23 mK has been achieved. It is well known that QWIP has very low 1/f noise, high operability, and uniformity. As a result, this camera uses a prerecorded nonuniformity correction table (i.e., gains and offsets) stored in its read-only-memory during operation, which enabled the miniaturization of this camera. In this paper, we discuss the development of this very sensitive long-wavelength infrared (LWIR) camera based on a GaAs/AlGaAs QWIP focal plane array (FPA) and its performance in terms of quantum efficiency, NEΔT, MRDT, uniformity, and operability     

A 1-V 86-mW-RX 53-mW-TX Single-Chip CMOS Transceiver for WLAN IEEE 802.11a

A 1-V WLAN IEEE 802.11a CMOS transceiver integrates all building blocks on a single chip including a transformer-feedback VCO and a stacked divider for the frequency synthesizer and 8-bit IQ ADCs and 8-bit IQ DACs. Fabricated in a 0.18-mum CMOS process and operated at a single 1-V supply, the receiver and the transmitter consume 85.7 mW and 53.2 mW, including the frequency synthesizer, respectively. The total chip area with pads is 12.5 mm².     

A 1-V 100-MS/s 8-bit CMOS Switched-Opamp Pipelined ADC Using Loading-Free Architecture

A 1-V, 8-bit pipelined ADC is realized using multi-phase switched-opamp (SO) technique. A novel loading-free architecture is proposed to reduce the capacitive loading and to improve the speed in low-voltage SO circuits. Employing the proposed loading-free pipelined ADC architecture together with double-sampling technique and a fast-wake-up dual-input-dual-output switchable opamp, the ADC achieves 100-MS/s conversion rate, which to our knowledge is the fastest ADC ever reported at 1-V supply using SO technique, with performance comparable to that of many high-voltage switched-capacitor (SC) ADCs. Implemented in a 0.18-mum CMOS process, the ADC obtains a peak SNR of 45.2 dB, SNDR of 41.5 dB, and SFDR of 52.6 dB. Measured DNL and INL are 0.5 LSB and 1.1 LSB, respectively. The chip dissipates only 30 mW from a 1-V supply     

Hydrodynamically Guided Hierarchical Self‐Assembly of Peptide–Protein Bioinks

Effective integration of molecular self‐assembly and additive manufacturing would provide a technological leap in bioprinting. This article reports on a biofabrication system based on the hydrodynamically guided co‐assembly of peptide amphiphiles (PAs) with naturally occurring biomolecules and proteins to generate hierarchical constructs with tuneable molecular composition and structural control. The system takes advantage of droplet‐on‐demand inkjet printing to exploit interfacial fluid forces and guide molecular self‐assembly into aligned or disordered nanofibers, hydrogel structures of different geometries and sizes, surface topographies, and higher‐ordered constructs bound by molecular diffusion. PAs are designed to co‐assemble during printing in cell diluent conditions with a range of extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins and biomolecules including fibronectin, collagen, keratin, elastin‐like proteins, and hyaluronic acid. Using combinations of these molecules, NIH‐3T3 and adipose derived stem cells are bioprinted within complex structures while exhibiting high cell viability (>88%). By integrating self‐assembly with 3D‐bioprinting, the study introduces a novel biofabrication platform capable of encapsulating and spatially distributing multiple cell types within tuneable pericellular environments. In this way, the work demonstrates the potential of the approach to generate complex bioactive scaffolds for applications such as tissue engineering, in vitro models, and drug screening.