Search

Fog water collection represents a meaningful effort in places where regular water sources, including surface water and ground water, are scarce. Inspired by the amazing fog water collection capability of the Stenocara beetles in the Namib Desert and based on the recent work in biomimetic water collection, this work reports a facile, easy-to-operate, and low-cost method for the fabrication of a hydrophilic–superhydrophobic patterned hybrid surface towards highly efficient fog water collection. The essence of the method is incorporating a (super)hydrophobically modified metal-based gauze onto the surface of a hydrophilic polystyrene (PS) flat sheet by a simple lab oven-based thermal pressing procedure. The produced hybrid patterned surfaces consisted of PS patches sitting within the holes of the metal gauzes. The method allows for easy control over the pattern’s dimensions (e.g., patch size) by varying the gauze mesh size and the thermal pressing temperature, which is then translated into the easy optimization of the ultimate fog water collection efficiency. Given the low-cost and wide availability of both PS and the metal gauze, this method has great potential for scaling-up. The results showed that the hydrophilic–superhydrophobic patterned hybrid surfaces with a similar pattern size to the Stenocara beetles's back pattern produced a significantly higher fog collection efficiency than the uniformly (super)hydrophilic or (super)hydrophobic surfaces. This work contributes to the general effort in fabricating mixed wettability patterned surfaces for atmospheric water collection for direct use.

Speckle reduction remains a critical issue for ultrasound image processing and analysis. The nonlocal means (NLM) filter has recently attached much attention due to its competitive despeckling performance. However, the existing NLM methods usually determine the similarity between two patches by directly utilizing the gray-level information of the noisy image, which renders it difficult to represent the structural similarity of ultrasound images effectively. To address this problem, the NLM method based on the simple deep learning baseline named PCANet is proposed by introducing the intrinsic features of image patches extracted by this network rather than the pixel intensities into the pixel similarity computation. In this approach, the improved two-stage PCANet is proposed by using Parametric Rectified Linear Unit (PReLU) activation function instead of the binary hashing and block histograms in the original PCANet. This model is firstly trained on the ultrasound database to learn the convolution kernels. Then, the trained PCANet is utilized to extract the intrinsic features from the image patches in the pre-denoised version of the noisy image to be despeckled. These obtained features are concatenated together to determine the structural similarity between image patches in the NLM method, based on which the weighted mean of all pixels in a search window is computed to produce the final despeckled image. Extensive experiments have been conducted on a variety of images to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over several well-known despeckling algorithm and the PCANet based NLM method using ReLU function and sigmoid function. Visual inspection indicates that the proposed method outperforms the compared methods in reducing speckle noise and preserving image details. The quantitative comparisons show that among all the evaluated methods, our method produces the best structural similarity index metrics (SSIM) values for the synthetic image, as well as the highest equivalent number of looks (ENL) value for the simulated image and the clinical ultrasound images.

Electrochemical performance of the as-prepared silicon based composite electrode for lithium ion battery can be enhanced by modifying the surface morphology of the Cu foil used as the anode current collector. Increasing the roughness of the Cu foil, contributes to the strong interface adhesion between the anode current collector and the silicon based active composite material slurry layer. The electrode with surface morphology modified Cu current collector delivers higher specific capacity and exhibits better rate capability than that with unmodified Cu current collector. It is also found that the cycle-life of the silicon based composite electrode has been significantly improved by using a surface morphology modified anode current collector. The enhanced cyclability is attributed to the good electrical contact integrality between the active materials and the anode current collector. The improved electrochemical performance indicates that optimizing the anode current collector system can be a valuable alternative for improving electrochemical properties of lithium ion rechargeable batteries.

The confinements of water can be divided into two main categories, namely, the confinements on surface or interface and the confinements in bulk water. By adding ions or applying electric field, the intensity and distribution of the hydrogen bonds can be greatly affected. These are collectively known as confinement on water surface or interface, which has potential applications in life science and industries involving evaporation control. Confined bulk water could be found everywhere in nature, such as in granular and porous materials, macromolecules and gels, etc. The investigation of the physical properties and the transports of the confined bulk water will contribute to understanding certain types of life activities such as the water transport in plant and in new application of extracting the shale oil and water.

Conventional hydraulic actuators in which the output force is regulated through servo-valves or variable pumps usually suffer from great noise and low efficiency. To overcome this hurdle, a novel force tracking electro-hydraulic actuator based on Pascal's principle is developed. The novel device uses an electric cylinder to change the volume of enclosed fluid and generate the desired loading pressure. In order to further improve the performance of the novel actuator, an integrated design procedure in which the mechanisms and control structure are designed simultaneously is studied. Firstly, the complete mathematical model of the novel actuator is established. The nonlinear system is translated into a linear time-varying model by replacing the effective bulk modulus of hydraulic oil with a time-varying coefficient. The feasibility of the semi-closed control structure with pressure feedback is analyzed on frequency domain and a compound controller is given. Secondly, performance indexes such as stability criteria, bandwidth, control errors and continuous operation capability of the novel actuator are presented in detail. Interactions of the design variables are analyzed through numerical simulations. Afterwards, a nonlinear constrained multi-objective optimization problem including both mechanical and control parameters is formulated. To prevent the optimization progress from falling into local minimum point, a particle swarm algorithm is employed to carry out the optimization design. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed integrated design method. And simulations are executed to verify the higher efficiency of the proposed novel electro-hydraulic actuator which is compared with the valve-controlled counterpart.

This review covers three aspects of PCR-based microfluidic chip assays: sample preparation, target amplification, and product detection. We also discuss the challenges related to the miniaturization and integration of each assay and make a comparison between conventional and microfluidic schemes. In order to accomplish these essential assays without human intervention between individual steps, the micro-components for fluid manipulation become critical. We therefore summarize and discuss components such as microvalves (for fluid regulation), pumps (for fluid driving) and mixers (for blending fluids). By combining the above assays and microcomponents, DNA testing of multi-step bio-reactions in microfluidic chips may be achieved with minimal external control. The combination of assay schemes with the use of micro-components also leads to rapid methods for DNA testing via multi-step bioreactions. Contains 259 references.

Mitochondria have been described as 'the powerhouse of the cell' as the organelle generates the majority of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in cells to support life. Mitochondria can be damaged due to stress, for example by reactive oxygen species (ROS). TP53-induced glycolysis and apoptosis regulator (TIGAR) serves a role in suppressing ROS damage and may protect mitochondria integrity. In the present study, the localization of TIGAR on mitochondria in 5-8F cells was demonstrated. Furthermore, it was indicated that the knockdown of TIGAR using lentivirus-short hairpin RNA induces the loss of mitochondrial membrane potential and cytochrome c leakage. However, these damaged mitochondria were not degraded in cells, but exhibited an abnormal appearance as indicated by mitochondrial swelling, crista collapse and vacuolization, with physiological dysfunction marked by reduced ATP production. Therefore, TIGAR maybe an indispensable protein for mitochondrial protection and degradation following cellular damage.

A novel Si/Sn composite anode material with unique ribbon structure was synthesized by Mechanical Milling (MM) and the structural transformation was studied in the present work. The microstructure characterization shows that Si/Sn composite with idealized entangled ribbon structured can be obtained by milling the mixture of the starting materials, Si and Sn for 20 h. According to the calculated results based on the XRD data, the as-milled 20 h sample has the smallest avergae crystalline size. It is supposed that the flexible ribbon structure allows for accommodation of intrinsic damage, which significantly improves the fracture toughness of the composite. The charge and discharge tests of the as-milled 20 h sample have been performed with reference to Li+/Li at a current density of 400 mA g−1 in the voltage from 1.5 to 0.03 V (vs Li/Li+) and the result shows that the initial capacity is ∼1400 mA h g−1, with a retention of ∼1100 mA h g−1 reversible capacity after 50 cycles, which is possible serving as the promising anode material for the lithium ion battery application.

Microdroplets offer unique compartments for accommodating a large number of chemical and biological reactions in tiny volume with precise control. A major concern in droplet-based microfluidics is the difficulty to address droplets individually and achieve high throughput at the same time. Here, we have combined an improved cartridge sampling technique with a microfluidic chip to perform droplet screenings and aggressive reaction with minimal (nanoliter-scale) reagent consumption. The droplet composition, distance, volume (nanoliter to subnanoliter scale), number, and sequence could be precisely and digitally programmed through the improved sampling technique, while sample evaporation and cross-contamination are effectively eliminated. Our combined device provides a simple model to utilize multiple droplets for various reactions with low reagent consumption and high throughput.

This paper studies the feasibility of segmenting large power system interconnections with AC link using energy storage technology, similar to the DC link, for improving the system dynamic stability. Firstly, the segmentation validity of the AC interconnected power system using energy storage technology is proved in terms of theoretical analysis, and then a simple and effective control strategy is proposed. Moreover, the influences of the energy storage device location and capacity on the proposed method are discussed in detail. The effectiveness of the proposed method for large AC interconnected power system segmentation is verified by simulations in two AC interconnected power systems.

Interstitial La0.7Pr0.3Fe11.5Si1.5C0.2Hx hydrides with large magnetocaloric effect are prepared. It is found that the addition of carbon atoms can lower the rate of hydrogen absorption/release, which is beneficial to an accurate control of hydrogen content. The Curie temperature T-C can be adjusted to the room temperature by changing the carbon/hydrogen content. The introduction of carbon atoms leads to a remarkable reduction of thermal/magnetic hysteresis because the first-order magnetic transition is weakened. The maximal magnetic entropy change of La0.7Pr0.3Fe11.5Si1.5C0.2H1.2 is found to be 22.1 J/kg K at T-C = 321 K without hysteresis loss for a field change of 0-5 T. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In this study, we established a simple method for evaluating the PCR compatibility of various common materials employed when fabricating microfluidic chips, including silicon, several kinds of silicon oxide, glasses, plastics, wax, and adhesives. Two-temperature PCR was performed with these materials to determine their PCR-inhibitory effect. In most cases, adding bovine serum albumin effectively improved the reaction yield. We also studied the individual PCR components from the standpoint of adsorption. Most of the materials did not inhibit the DNA, although they noticeably interacted with the polymerase. We provide a simple method of performing PCR-compatibility testing of materials using inexpensive instrumentation that is common in molecular biology laboratories. Furthermore, our method is direct, being performed under actual PCR conditions with high temperature. Our results provide an overview of materials that are PCR-friendly for fabricating microfluidic devices. The PCR reaction, without any additives, performed best with pyrex glass, and it performed worst with PMMA or acrylic glue materials.

BACKGROUND: Post partum depression (PPD) is relatively common in China but its clinical characteristics and risk factors have not been studied. We set out to investigate whether known risk factors for PPD could be found in Chinese women. METHODS: A case control design was used to determine the impact of known risk factors for PPD in a cohort of 1970 Chinese women with recurrent DSM-IV major depressive disorder (MDD). In a within-case design we examined the risk factors for PPD in patients with recurrent MDD. We compared the clinical features of MDD in cases with PPD to those without MDD. Odds ratios were calculated using logistic and ordinal regression. RESULTS: Lower occupational and educational statuses increased the risk of PPD, as did a history of pre-menstrual symptoms, stressful life events and elevated levels of the personality trait of neuroticism. Patients with PPD and MDD were more likely to experience a comorbid anxiety disorder, had a younger age of onset of MDD, have higher levels of neuroticism and dysthymia. LIMITATIONS: Results obtained in this clinical sample may not be applicable to PPD within the community. Data were obtained retrospectively and we do not know whether the correlations we observe have the same causes as those operating in other populations. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the despite cultural differences between Chinese and Western women, the phenomenology and risk factors for PPD are very similar.

We report a simple and cost-effective method for fabricating integrated electronic-microfluidic devices with multilayer configurations. A CO2 laser plotter was employed to directly write patterns on a transferred polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer, which served as both a bonding and a working layer. The integration of electronics in microfluidic devices was achieved by an alignment bonding of top and bottom electrode-patterned substrates fabricated with conventional lithography, sputtering and lift-off techniques. Processes of the developed fabrication method were illustrated. Major issues associated with this method as PDMS surface treatment and characterization, thickness-control of the transferred PDMS layer, and laser parameters optimization were discussed, along with the examination and testing of bonding with two representative materials (glass and silicon). The capability of this method was further demonstrated by fabricating a microfluidic chip with sputter-coated electrodes on the top and bottom substrates. The device functioning as a microparticle focusing and trapping chip was experimentally verified. It is confirmed that the proposed method has many advantages, including simple and fast fabrication process, low cost, easy integration of electronics, strong bonding strength, chemical and biological compatibility, etc.

In this paper, we report the construction of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device for fast amplification and detection of DNA. This device consists of an interchangeable PCR chamber, a temperature control component as well as an optical detection system. The DNA amplification happens on an interchangeable chip with the volumes as low as 1.25 μl, while the heating and cooling rate was as fast as 12.7°C/second ensuring that the total time needed of only 25 min to complete the 35 cycle PCR amplification. An optimized PCR with two-temperature approach for denaturing and annealing (Td and Ta) of DNA was also formulated with the PCR chip, with which the amplification of male-specific sex determining region Y (SRY) gene marker by utilizing raw saliva was successfully achieved and the genetic identification was in-situ detected right after PCR by the optical detection system.

In this paper, a novel flywheel energy storage device, called the flexible power conditioner, which integrates both the characteristics of the flywheel energy storage and the doubly-fed induction machine, is proposed to improve power system stability. A prototype is developed and its principle, composition, and design are described in detail. The control system is investigated and the operating characteristics are analyzed. The test results based on the prototype are presented and evaluated. The test results illustrate that the prototype meets the design requirement on power regulation and starting, and provides a cost-effective and effective means to improve power system stability.

We report a simple approach for measuring the local contact angle of liquids on a heterogeneous surface consisting of intersected hydrophobic and hydrophilic patch arrays, specifically by employing confocal microscopy and the addition of a very low concentration of Rhodamine-B (RB) (2 × 10(-7) mol/L). Interestingly, RB at that concentration was found to be aggregated at the air-liquid and solid (hydrophobic patch only)-liquid interfaces, which helps us to distinguish the liquid and solid interfaces as well as hydrophobic and hydrophilic patches by their corresponding fluorescent intensities. From the measured local contact angles, the line tension can be easily derived and the value is found to be (-2.06-1.53) × 10(-6) J/m.

The electrochemical properties of ferrocene (Fc) on a glassy carbon (GC) electrode modified by multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) in the presence and absence of surfactants have been investigated by progressively voltammetric sweeping. Dihexadecyl phosphate (DHP) and hexadecyl trismethyl ammonium chloride (HTAC) are found to impact the redox reactions of Fc adsorbed on MWNT surfaces. An excess amount of DHP dispatches Fc from MWNTs surfaces, leading to weakly adsorbed configuration of Fc. The formal potential of the adsorbed Fc in the presence of DHP shifts to a lower potential. Cationic surfactant HTAC on MWNT surfaces depresses the redox reactions corresponding to the weakly adsorbed configuration of Fc. It becomes evident that the configuration and hence redox reactions of Fc depend strongly on the presence and concentrations of surfactants on the electrode surfaces and in the buffer solutions.

This article is a concise overview about the developing microfluidic systems named surface-tension-confined droplet microfluidics (STORMs). Different from traditional complexed droplet microfluidics which generated and confined the droplets by three-dimensional (3D) poly(dimethylsiloxane)-based microchannels, STORM systems provide two-dimensional (2D) platforms for control of droplets. STORM devices utilize surface energy, with methods such as surface chemical modification and mechanical processing, to control the movement of fluid droplets. Various STORM devices have been readily prepared, with distinct advantages over conventional droplet microfluidics, which generated and confined the droplets by 3D poly(dimethylsiloxane)-based microchannels, such as significant reduction of energy consumption necessary for device operation, facile or even direct introduction of droplets onto patterned surface without external driving force such as a micropump, thus increased frequency or efficiency of droplets generation of specific STORM device, among others. Thus, STORM devices can be excellent alternatives for majority areas in droplet microfluidics and irreplaceable choices in certain fields by contrast. In this review, fabrication methods or strategies, manipulation methods or mechanisms, and main applications of STORM devices are introduced.

A robust adaptive controller for a nonholonomic mobile robot with unknown kinematic and dynamic parameters is proposed. A kinematic controller whose output is the input of the relevant dynamic controller is provided by using the concept of backstepping. An adaptive algorithm is developed in the kinematic controller to approximate the unknown kinematic parameters, and a simple single-layer neural network is used to express the highly nonlinear robot dynamics in terms of the known and unknown parameters. In order to attenuate the effects of the uncertainties and disturbances on tracking performance, a sliding mode control term is added to the dynamic controller. In the deterministic design of feedback controllers for the uncertain dynamic systems, upper bounds on the norm of the uncertainties are an important clue to guarantee the stability of the closed-loop system. However, sometimes these upper bounds may not be easily obtained because of the complexity of the structure of the uncertainties. Thereby, simple adaptation laws are proposed to approximate upper bounds on the norm of the uncertainties to address this problem. The stability of the proposed control system is shown through the Lyapunov method. Lastly, a design example for a mobile robot with two actuated wheels is provided and the feasibility of the controller is demonstrated by numerical simulations.

We report the generation and manipulation of electrorheological (ER) droplets that exhibit the giant ER effect. The experiments were carried out on specially designed microfluidic chips, in which the ER droplets were generated by using the microfluidic flow-focusing approach. Both the size and formation rate of these droplets can be controlled through digitally applied electrical signals. The principle of droplet manipulation is based on the electrical responsiveness of ER droplets and hence the denotation of “smart” when the electrical signals can be triggered by sensing/control devices. Due to the unique characteristics of the GER effect, the smart droplets can deform and even stop the microfluidic channel flow under an applied electric field. The pressure difference induced by the smart droplets inside the micro-channel is controllable by varying the field strengths, droplet sizes and particle concentrations in the GER suspension. By trapping and timed release of smart droplets in different micro-branch channels, we demonstrate that the smart droplets generated upstream cannot only be stored or displayed in the desired downstream channel(s) and thereby offer the potential of micro-droplet display, but also be useful in counting, flow directing and sorting the desired number of passive droplets sandwiched between two smart droplets. Such capabilities of smart droplets will enable the programmable control of discrete processes in bio-analysis, chemical reactions, digital microfluidics, and digital droplet display.

To realize the fast and accurate detection of the edges from the blurry images, the fast multilevel fuzzy edge detection (FMFED) algorithm is proposed. The FMFED algorithm first enhances the image contrast by means of the fast multilevel fuzzy enhancement (FMFE) algorithm using the simple transformation function based on two image thresholds. Second, the edges are extracted from the enhanced image by the two-stage edge detection operator that identifies the edge candidates based on the local characteristics of the image and then determines the true edge pixels using the edge detection operator based on the extremum of the gradient values. Experimental results demonstrate that the FMFED algorithm can extract the thin edges and remove the false edges from the image, which leads to its better performance than the Sobel operator, Canny operator, traditional fuzzy edge detection algorithm, and other multilevel fuzzy edge detection algorithms

Focused ultrasound (FUS) combined with microbubbles is an attractive method to deliver therapeutic agents to brain tissue noninvasively, transiently and locally such as antibodies, gene vectors, liposomal drugs. The objective of this study is to investigate passive delivery outcome of liposomes after ultrasound mediated blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption. Microbubbles were injected intraveneously through mice tail vein at 0.1 µL/g. Focused ultrasound (center frequency: 1.2819 MHz) was applied to mice brains with 10 ms pulse length and 1 Hz repetition frequency at acoustic power 1.1 W for 60 s. After sonication, 55-nm and 120-nm rhodamine-labeled liposomes were administered to mice intraveneously. Fluorescence imaging of brain coronal sections showed that the spatial distribution of delivered liposomes across BBB was characterized by scattered spots and heterogeneous. However, the quantitative analysis results indicated that passive deliveries of liposomes across BBB were confined, especially for 120-nm liposomes.

It is found that nucleic acids can enhance the fluorescence intensity of yttrium(III) (Y(3+))-rutin in presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTMAB) system. In hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA)-HCl buffer, the maximum enhanced fluorescence is produced, with maximum excitation and emission wavelengths at 452 and 520 nm, respectively. Based on this, a new fluorimetric method of determination of nucleic acids is proposed. Under optimum conditions, the enhanced fluorescence intensity is proportion to the concentration of nucleic acids in the range of 1.0 x 10(-7) to 1.0 x 10(-5)g/ml for fish sperm DNA (fsDNA), 1.0 x 10(-7) to 4.6 x 10(-6)g/ml for yeast RNA (yRNA), their detection limits (S/N=3) are 7.5 x 10(-8), 8.0 x 10(-8)g/ml, respectively. The interaction mechanism is also studied.

A 30-year-old woman presented with a painless left upper neck swelling for more than a week. Fibrolaryngoscope examination suggested nasopharyngeal carcinoma. FDG PET/CT was performed for an initial staging, which revealed intense activity in the soft tissue mass in the nasopharynx and cervical lymph nodes. However, biopsy from the nasopharyngeal lesion demonstrated tuberculosis.

Recently, it has been shown that a novel parallel manipulator called H4 can be employed to perform high speed motion for semiconductor applications. In this new family of parallel manipulator, singularities are associated with either loss or gain of degrees of freedom (DOF). This paper deals with singularity analysis of H4 utilizing line geometry tools and screw theory. Firstly, the static equilibrium condition of the end effector is derived to obtain the full 6×6 matrix, which is set of governing lines of the manipulator. Based on linear dependency of these lines, the singular configurations of the manipulator can be identified. Moreover, in order to deal with singularities associated with loss of DOFs (serial singularity), the static equilibrium of the actuators is also defined. Secondly, architecture and constraint singularities associated with gain of DOFs (parallel singularity) are defined and analyzed using linear complex approximation algorithm (LCAA), which is employed to obtain the closest linear complex, presented by its screw coordinates, to the set of governing lines. The linear complex axis and pitch provide additional information and a better physical understanding of the manipulator’s self-motion when in or closed to a singular configuration. Lastly, various singularities of an example H4 manipulator are presented and analyzed using the proposed methods.

The progressive current degradation and breakdown behaviors of GaN-based light emitting diodes under high reverse-bias stress are studied by combining the electrical, optical, and surface morphology characterizations. The current features a typical "soft breakdown" behavior, which is linearly correlated to an increase of the accumulative number of electroluminescence spots. The time-to-failure for each failure site approximately obeys a Weibull distribution with slopes of about 0.67 and 4.09 at the infant and wear-out periods, respectively. After breakdown, visible craters can be observed at the device surface as a result of transient electrostatic discharge. By performing focused ion beam cuts coupled with scan electron microscope, we observed a local current shunt path in the surface layer, caused by the rapid microstructure deterioration due to significant current heating effect, consistent well with the optical beam induced resistance change observations.

Objective: Over the past decade, fluorescent semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots (QDs), have been applied in biomedical imaging in vitro and in vivo because of their fascinating optical properties. In this work, we investigated the application of CdTe QDs for tumor fluorescence in vivo imaging. Methods: The transparent dorsal skin fold window chamber (DSFC) was constructed on the 4~6 week-old BALB/c mice. The melanoma cells stably expressing green fluorescent protein ---ZsGreen were transplanted into the chamber and the melanoma DSFC model was established successfully. The water soluble CdTe QDs were synthesized and then administrated in the model through the tail intravenous injection. The fluorescent expression of B16 cells were assayed by fluorescent microscopy, the tumor growth, the blood capillaries distributions and its dynamic changes were observed by stereomicroscopy and laser scanning confocal microscopy. Results: The results demonstrated that the expression efficiency of ZsGreen was 41%, which met the experimental requirement. The tumors was visible inside the chamber after implantation of melanoma cells for 5~6 days, while no obvious changes in mice behaviors were found. After injection of the QDs, CdTe QDs accumulated at the invading edge of a range of solid tumor. We could also observe the tumor cells growth near the blood vessels, the angiogenesis occurred inside the tumor and the local blood capillaries increased. Conclusions: This work provided a new strategy for the tumor in vivo imaging and the development of targeted antineoplastic drugs.

Three-dimensional (3D) temperature mapping method with high spatial resolution and acquisition rate is of vital importance in evaluating thermal processes in micro-environment. We have synthesized a new temperature-sensitive functional material (Rhodamine B functionalized Polydimethylsiloxane). By performing optical sectioning of this material, we established an advanced method for visualizing the micro-scale 3D thermal distribution inside microfluidic chip with down to 10 ms temporal resolution and 2 ~ 6°C temperature resolution depending the capture parameters. This method is successfully applied to monitor the local temperature variation throughout micro-droplet heat transfer process and further reveal exothermic nanoliter droplet reactions to be unique and milder than bench-top experiment.

Photocatalysis provides a ‘green’ approach to completely eliminate various kinds of contaminants that are fatal for current environmental and energy issues. Semiconductors are one of the most frequently used photocatalysts as they can absorb light over a wide spectral range. However, it is also well known that naked SiO2 is not an efficient photocatalyst due to its relatively large band gap, which could only absorb shortwave ultraviolet light. In this report, nanoscale particles of carbon-doped silicon dioxide (C-doped SiO2) for use in photocatalysis were successfully prepared by a facile one-pot thermal process using tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) as the source of both silicon and carbon. These particles were subsequently characterized by thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray diffraction, standard and high resolution transmission electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The C-doped SiO2 displayed outstanding photocatalytic properties, as evidenced by its catalysis of Rhodamine B degradation under near-UV irradiation. We propose that carbon doping of the SiO2 lattice creates new energy states between the bottom of the conduction band and the top of the valence band, which narrows the band gap of the material. As a result, the C-doped SiO2 nanoparticles exhibit excellent photocatalytic activities in a neutral environment. The novel synthesis reported herein for this material is both energy efficient and environmentally friendly and as such shows promise as a technique for low-cost, readily scalable industrial production.

This article was originally published online on 21 July 2008 with a typographical error in the third author’s name. The third author’s name appeared incorrectly as “Jingbo Wu” instead of “Jinbo Wu”. All online versions of the article were corrected on 14 December 2010. The names and affiliations of the authors appear correctly above.

Scarcity of the spectrum is becoming a major issue based on traditional frequency planning scheme, cognitive radio (CR) has been proposed for better spectrum utilization efficiency by intelligently sensing and opportunistic access. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to determine signal to noise ratio threshold (SNRT) based on transmission power and complexity of cognitive detector under lognormal shadowing conditions. Since there is tradeoff between detection probability and false alarm probability, we can maximize spectrum utilization efficiency with pre-determined detection performance,meanwhile SNRT is adjusted to void unacceptable interference to primary receiver (PR) and minimize complexity of cognitive detector according to transmission power. Numerical results will show that cognitive radio can adjust SNRT adaptively in order to guarantee the PR decoding signal from primary transmitter (PT) without unacceptable interference.

As is well-known, cooperation among cognitive users can improve the accuracy of spectrum detection in cognitive radio systems. In this paper, based on OR-rule, a cooperative double-threshold energy detection algorithm is proposed. Theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that this strategy can improve the spectrum detection probability significantly.

This paper proposes a double-fed induction machine with a flywheel energy storage system called the multifunctional Flexible Power Conditioner (FPC). It consists of the doubly-fed induction machine (DFIM) with very large rotating inertia and a voltage-source pulse width modulation (PWM) rectifier-inverter used as an AC exciter. A FPC 10kW model machine is developed. A simulation model for the model machine is built up and is simulated in some operating states, including phase modulation, subsynchronous, super-synchronous and so on. The model machine also is experiment in these proposed operating states. These results of simulation and experiment show that FPC is an effective way to compensate the unbalanced power and enhance the system stability. Satisfactory performance in decoupled control for the active and the reactive power and dynamic operation are obtained.

In cognitive radio systems, secondary users should determine correctly whether the primary user is absent or not in a certain spectrum within a short detection period. Traditional spectrum sensing schemes based on fixed threshold are sensitive to noise uncertainty, a fractional fluctuate of average noise power in a short time will lead to the accuracy of spectrum detection decreasing seriously. In this paper we propose a novel dynamic threshold energy detection algorithm in cognitive radio systems. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed strategy can combat the noise uncertainty effectively, and good detection accuracy can be attained, if a suitable detection threshold is chosen. That is, the proposed scheme can enhance the robustness of combating the noise uncertainty and veracities of the spectrum sensing.

Cognitive radios should have the capability to detect idle spectrum and share it without harmful interference with other users. This paper presents a strategy for extracting second-order cyclostationary characteristics of licensed system and rental system signals based on spectrum pooling system. According to cyclostationary characteristics of licensed users signals received at the nodes of CRs, predicting whether a signal from a primary transmitter is locally present or not and estimates the channel allocation information. In this paper, formulas for calculations of cyclostationary characteristics are derived and consistent conclusions are illustrated using simulation results.

Electrorheological (ER) fluids are a type of ''smart'' colloid capable of reversible viscosity variations, or even solidification, in response to an applied electric field. The response time can be as short as a few milliseconds. By using the ER fluid as the carrier fluid in microfluidic chips, we report the generation and manipulation of microdroplets and bubbles via integrated, digitally controlled micro-electrodes equipped with a feedback system. By utilizing the strong electric response of the ER fluid, the flow rate can be easily controlled digitally, thereby making tunable the size of the droplets generated and their separations. In particular, ordering change in a chain of droplets is demonstrated. The maneuverability presented in this paper may have potential applications in a variety of lab chips for chemical reactions, bioassays, as well as microfluidic logic computation.

A microheater and a thermal sensor were fabricated inside elastomeric polydimethylsiloxane microchannels by injecting silver paint (or other conductive materials) into the channels. With a high-precision control scheme, microheaters can be used for rapid heating, with precise temperature control and uniform thermal distribution. Using such a microheater and feedback system, a polymerase chain reaction experiment was carried out whereas the DNA was successfully amplified in 25 cycles, with 1 min per cycle.

Elastic elements, such as timing belts, have become more attractive where long travel length is required. However, the compliance of the belt causes mechanical resonance which reduces stability margins, forces servo gains down and deteriorates machine performance. In order to suppress the vibration of a linear belt-driven system and improve the transient response performance, the mathematical model of the belt-driven system is deduced and a double closed-loop control system is constructed in this paper. Then the mechanical resonance of the belt-driven system is analyzed and classified into two categories: low frequency resonance and high frequency resonance, which is crucial for guiding the design of controller for vibration suppression. A notch filter is adopted to attenuate the high-frequency vibration and increase servo gains. A simple PID controller accompanied with input shapers is proposed to suppress the low-frequency vibration. The input shaper is designed on the z-plane and its analytic solution is deduced, which can plan an appropriate reference profile with robustness to the variations of both natural frequency and damping ratio so that the fast point-to-point motions with minimum residual vibration can be obtained. At last, the robustness of the input shaping method is discussed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the methods proposed in this paper.

We give a short review of droplet microfluidics with the emphasis on “smart” droplets, which are based on materials that can be actively controlled and manipulated by external stimuli such as stress, temperature, pH, and electric field or magnetic field. In particular, the focus is on the generation and manipulation of droplets that are based on the giant electrorheological fluid (GERF). We elaborate on the preparation and characteristics of the GERF, the relevant microfluidics chip format, and the generation and control of droplets using GERF as either droplets or the carrier fluid. An important application of the GERF droplets, in the realization of first universal microfluidic logic device which can execute the 16 Boolean logic operations, is detailed.

We show that the terahertz resonant transmission through metal hole array can be tailored by filling the holes with metamaterials. Experiment and finite difference time domain simulations show this type of resonant transmission to be induced by locally resonant modes, instead of the usual lateral surface grating mode. As the metamaterial’s local resonances can be manipulated by varying their geometric configurations, this type of resonant transmission can be tuned over a broad frequency regime that is subwavelength to the array periodicity, with a transmission profile that can also be tailored by the frequency location of the resonance. Such tunability of resonant transmission, with its attendant enhanced local field intensity in the vicinity of the aperture, may provide some potential applications.

In this communication, we report a newly developed cell pattering methodology by a silicon-based stencil, which exhibited advantages such as easy handling, reusability, hydrophilic surface and mature fabrication technologies. Cell arrays obtained by this method were used to investigate cell growth under a temperature gradient, which demonstrated the possibility of studying cell behavior in a high-throughput assay.