Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Optical Spectroscopy of Novel Quantum Dot Structures

This thesis comprises works on novel quantum dot structures. New ways of growing III-V semiconductor quantum dots by integrating a ternary element or by growing on top of a silicon wafer are optically characterized, opening the way to more specific work on those new structures, while furthering our understanding of the epitaxy mechanisms behind them. We study InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot structures monolithically grown on a silicon substrate, without use of germanium virtual substrate nor wafer bonding technique. Optical characterization of the sample with micro photoluminescence is performed and shows very good single quantum dot emission lines. Single photon emission from the InGaAs dots is demonstrated with photon correlation experiment showing clear anti-bunching. Photonic crystal cavities are fabricated for the first time with InGaAs dots monolithically grown on silicon and exhibit very high quality factor up to 13000 with a large percentage of cavities having Q-factors over 9000. This allows observation of Purcell effect for single photon emitting QDs and strong light-matter coupling between InGaAs QDs and cavities. We also investigate unexpected emission lines on the same sample. The lines are identified as interface fluctuations in a GaAs/AlGaAs short period superlattice, making them the first Interface fluctuation quantum dots grown directly on silicon. Further optical characterization confirms the quantum dot nature of the emissions. Polarization measurements allow study of the fine structure splitting of exciton/bi-exciton pairs and the single photon emission of the dots is demonstrated. Finally in a subsequent chapter we investigate InP/GaInP quantum dots with arsenic deposited during the growth process. Magneto-optic PL of samples with different concentrations of As allows to determine how the As changes the characteristics of the dots. Schottky diodes are fabricated and tested to show good characteristics, and electric field experiments demonstrate charge control over this new kind of dots.
PROLIFERATIVE ACTIVITY OF THE LYMPHATIC TISSUES OF RATS AS STUDIED WITH TRITIUM-LABELED THYMIDINE

Cytokinetic data are presented, employing quantitation of H3DNA in the lymphatic tissues of normal rats serially sacrificed after H3Tdr administration. A marked difference in the patterns of initial labeling and label loss was observed between the thymus and peripheral lymphatic tissue. The data are compatible with other indications of rapid cell renewal in the thymus. There is suppression of initial uptake of H3Tdr into the DNA of each large lymphocytic progenitor cell in the thymus, apparently because of a feedback of thymidine containing material from small lymphocytes in the thymus. Depletion of the thymus of small cells, as by operative stress or whole body x-ray, leads to a marked increase in the uptake of H3Tdr into the DNA of large thymocytes. This finding, which is in agreement with the previous findings of Sugino et al. (33, 34) suggesting transfer of thymine nucleotides from small thymus lymphocytes to precursor cells, may or may not be related to the apparent transfer of DNA label between thymic cells. The evidence for the latter consists of the curvilinear dilution of the DNA label in the thymus proliferating cell population and the relationship between the rate of DNA label dilution in large cells and the H3DNA in the small cells in the thymus. After the DNA label in progenitor cells in the thymus and lymph nodes has entered the small cell population, the subsequent dilution of grains in these dividing cells follows the same slope as the loss of radioactivity from the entire lymph node. There is a long retention of some H3DNA label in the dividing lymph node cell population. This suggests that the loss of radioactivity from the dividing cells and from the small cell population as a whole occurs equally. This pattern prevails regardless of whether the percentage of large and small cells is altered experimentally. These findings can be explained by an interchange of the DNA nuclear label between small lymphocytes and large lymphocytes. This could occur by some process such as phagocytosis or pinocytosis, or by transformation of the small lymphocyte into a large, dividing cell. The data fit best with the latter possibility. All or any of these mechanisms would lead to an equilibration of the DNA label between large and small cells. This finding prevents the assignment of a finite life span to lymphocytes on the basis of DNA labeling kinetics. Nevertheless, there appear to be at least two different types of lymphocytes. One, the "thymus-type" lymphocyte, is found in the thymus cortex, bone marrow and germinal centers of lymphoid follicles. The other type, found abundantly in the widespread peripheral lymphatic tissue, shows a very prolonged retention of DNA label and is believed to be the recirculating, "immunologically committed" cells described by others. These cells do not appear to enter the thymus cortex.
Neuroglial Metabolism in the Awake Rat Brain: CO2 Fixation Increases with Brain Activity

Glial cells are thought to supply energy for neurotransmission by increasing nonoxidative glycolysis; however, oxidative metabolism in glia may also contribute to increased brain activity. To study glial contribution to cerebral energy metabolism in the unanesthetized state, we measured neuronal and glial metabolic fluxes in the awake rat brain by using a double isotopic-labeling technique and a two-compartment mathematical model of neurotransmitter metabolism. Rats (n = 23) were infused simultaneously with 14C-bicarbonate and [1-13C]glucose for up to 1 hr. The 14C and 13C labeling of glutamate, glutamine, and aspartate was measured at five time points in tissue extracts using scintillation counting and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance of the chromatographically separated amino acids. The isotopic 13C enrichment of glutamate and glutamine was different, suggesting significant rates of glial metabolism compared with the glutamate-glutamine cycle. Modeling the 13C-labeling time courses alone and with 14C confirmed significant glial TCA cycle activity (\batchmode \documentclass[fleqn,10pt,legalpaper]{article} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amsmath} \pagestyle{empty} \begin{document} \(V_{\mathrm{PDH}}^{(\mathrm{g})},{\sim}0.5\) \end{document} μmol · gm-1 · min-1) relative to the glutamate-glutamine cycle (VNT) (∼0.5-0.6 μmol · gm-1 · min-1). The glial TCA cycle rate was ∼30% of total TCA cycle activity. A high pyruvate carboxylase rate (VPC, ∼0.14-0.18 μmol · gm-1 · min-1) contributed to the glial TCA cycle flux. This anaplerotic rate in the awake rat brain was severalfold higher than under deep pentobarbital anesthesia, measured previously in our laboratory using the same 13C-labeling technique. We postulate that the high rate of anaplerosis in awake brain is linked to brain activity by maintaining glial glutamine concentrations during increased neurotransmission.
ABS Nanocomposites Containing Modified Clay

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) nanocomposites were prepared by melt-mixing virgin ABS with organoclay. The organoclay was prepared by modifying sodium montmorillonite clay. The increase in the basal spacing of sodium montmorillonite clay resulting from modification and polymer intercalation was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The dispersion of clay layers in the polymer matrix was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Mechanical and thermal properties of the prepared nanocomposites were investigated. The prepared ABS nanocomposites were also subjected to characterization by dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA).
Ambiguity, Learning, and Asset Returns

We propose a novel generalized recursive smooth ambiguity model which allows a three-way separation among risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and intertemporal substitution. We apply this utility to a consumption-based asset pricing model in which consumption and dividends follow hidden Markov regime-switching processes. Our calibrated model can match the mean equity premium, the mean riskfree rate, and the volatility of the equity premium observed in the data. In addition, our model can generate a variety of dynamic asset pricing phenomena, including the procyclical variation of price-dividend ratios, the countercyclical variation of equity premia and equity volatility, and the mean reversion of excess returns. The key intuition is that an ambiguity averse agent behaves pessimistically by attaching more weight to the pricing kernel in bad times when his continuation values are low.
Adaptive forward error correction for best effort Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work we propose an Adaptive Forward Error Correction (AFEC) algorithm for best effort Wireless Sensor Networks. The switching model is described in terms of a finite-state Markov model and it is based on the channel behavior, observed via Packet Delivery Ratio in the recent past. We compare the performance of AFEC with static FEC, as well as uncoded transmissions. The results demonstrate a gain in PDR achieved by introducing FEC coding in uncoded IEEE 802.15. 4 transmissions, as well as the advantages over static FEC schemes, namely increased throughput and reduced energy consumption. The proposed solution is IEEE 802.15. 4-compliant and requires no additional feedback channels.
The use of C-reactive protein in predicting bacterial co-Infection in children with bronchiolitis

Background: Bronchiolitis is a potentially life-threatening respiratory illness commonly affecting children who are less than two years of age. Patients with viral lower respiratory tract infection are at risk for co-bacterial infection. Aim: The aim of our study was to evaluate the use of C-reactive protein (CRP) in predicting bacterial co-infection in patients hospitalized for bronchiolitis and to correlate the results with the use of antibiotics. Patients and Methods: This is a prospective study that included patients diagnosed with bronchiolitis admitted to Makassed General Hospital in Beirut from October 2008 to April 2009. A tracheal aspirate culture was taken from all patients with bronchiolitis on admission to the hospital. Blood was drawn to test C-reactive protein level, white cell count, transaminases level, and blood sugar level. Results: Forty-nine patients were enrolled in the study and were divided into two groups. Group 1 included patients with positive tracheal aspirate culture and Group 2 included those with negative culture. All patients with a CRP level ≥2 mg/dL have had bacterial co-infection. White cell count, transaminases and blood sugar levels were not predictive for bacterial co-infection. The presence of bacterial co-infection increased the length of hospital stay in the first group by 2 days compared to those in the second group. Conclusion: Bacterial co-infection is frequent in infants with moderate to severe bronchiolitis and requires admission. Our data showed that a CRP level greater than 1.1 mg/dL raised suspicion for bacterial co-infection. Thus, a tracheal aspirate should be investigated microbiologically in all hospitalized patients in order to avoid unnecessary antimicrobial therapy and to shorten the duration of the hospital stay.
Intrinsic Decompositions for Image Editing

Intrinsic images are a mid‐level representation of an image that decompose the image into reflectance and illumination layers. The reflectance layer captures the color/texture of surfaces in the scene, while the illumination layer captures shading effects caused by interactions between scene illumination and surface geometry. Intrinsic images have a long history in computer vision and recently in computer graphics, and have been shown to be a useful representation for tasks ranging from scene understanding and reconstruction to image editing. In this report, we review and evaluate past work on this problem. Specifically, we discuss each work in terms of the priors they impose on the intrinsic image problem. We introduce a new synthetic ground‐truth dataset that we use to evaluate the validity of these priors and the performance of the methods. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the different methods in the context of image‐editing applications.
How Bad Are Twins? Output Costs of Currency and Banking Crises

We investigate the output effects of banking and currency crises in emerging markets, focusing on whether "twin crises" entail especially large losses. Recent literature emphasizes the costs of financial crises, and suggests that twin crises are particularly damaging to the real economy. Using a panel data set for 1975–97, we find that currency (banking) crises are very costly, reducing output by about 5%–8% (8%–10%) over a 2–4 year period. The cumulative loss of both types of crises is therefore very large. We do not find, however, additional feedbacks or interactive effects associated with twin crises further damaging the economy.
Design of X-band oscillator based on substrate integrated circular cavity

Based on the substrate integrated circular cavity (SICC), a novel X-band dielectric resonator oscillator is developed. Owing to the high quality factor and planar structure of the SICC, the advantages of our proposed oscillator consist of low phase noise, small size, low cost, and planar integration. In this paper, the series reflection type is selected as the topology of our proposed oscillator and the oscillator is analyzed with the concept of negative resistance. The oscillator performance is characterized by an output power of 8.5dBm at 8.41 GHz and the measured phase noise is -119.67 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset.
Enhancing Freebase Question Answering Using Textual Evidence

Existing knowledge-based question answering systems often rely on small annotated training data. While shallow methods like information extraction techniques are robust to data scarcity, they are less expressive than deep understanding methods, thereby failing at answering questions involving multiple constraints. Here we alleviate this problem by empowering a relation extraction method with additional evidence from Wikipedia. We first present a novel neural network based relation extractor to retrieve the candidate answers from Freebase, and then develop a refinement model to validate answers using Wikipedia. We achieve 53.3 F1 on WebQuestions, a substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art.
Developing Web-Oriented Homework System to Assess Students' Introductory Physics Course Performance and Compare to Paper-Based Peer Homework.

The World Wide Web influences education and our lives in many ways. Nowadays, Web-based homework has been becoming widespread practice in physics courses and some other courses as well. Although are some disputes whether this is an encouraging or risky development for student learning, there is limited research assessing the pedagogical effect of changing the medium from written, handgraded homework to online oriented, computer-graded homework. In this study, web-oriented homework system is developed to assess students’ introductory physics course performance. Later on, these results are compared with paper-based (peer) homework performance for mid enrollment physics courses. One of two identical sections of introductory physics course students received paper-based, hand graded group homework while the other received the individual web-based homework. Then two groups’ on conceptual and problem-solving performance measures are compared. No significant differences were found in students’ Force Concept Inventory (FCI) test scores; however, average homework performance scores were significant that could be attributed to the homework method used in favor of paperbased peer homework group.
CLINICAL STUDY: Physical health problems among patients seeking treatment for alcohol use disorders: a study in six European cities

The present study investigates physical health problems among patients with alcohol use disorders at alcohol treatment agencies in six European cities. The sample comprised 315 patients with a primary alcohol use disorder. Data were collected at admission to treatment using a structured research protocol, and ratings were made by a medically qualified physician subsequent to a physical examination of the patient. Physical health problems were extremely common: 79% of the sample had at least one problem, and 59% had two or more problems. Health problems were often serious, and 60% had at least one health problem that required treatment. The most common problems were gastrointestinal and liver disorders, but about a quarter of the sample had cardiovascular or neurological problems. Frequency of drinking, duration of alcohol use disorder, and severity of alcohol dependence were associated with increased physical morbidity. Current smoking status and age were also associated with poorer physical health. Older drinkers had more physical health problems although they were less severely alcohol dependent than their younger counterparts. The high prevalence of physical health problems among problem drinkers provides opportunities of screening for alcohol use disorders not only in specialist alcohol treatment services but also in other health‐care settings. It is recommended that alcohol treatment agencies should provide a full routine health screen of patients at admission to treatment with provision or referral to appropriate treatment.
Identification of Malassezia Species Isolated from Patients with Pityriasis Versicolor Using PCR-RFLP Method in Markazi Province, Central Iran

Abstract Background The lipophilic yeasts of Malassezia species are members of the normal skin microbial that are cause of pityriasis versicolor. Pityriasis versicolor is a common superficial fungal infection with world-wide distribution. The phenotypic methods for identification of Malassezia species usually are time consuming and unreliable to differentiate newly identified species. But DNA-based techniques rapidly and accurately identified Malassezia species. The purpose of this study was isolation and identification of Malassezia Species from patients with pityriasis versicolor by molecular methods in Markazi Province, Central Iran in 2012. Methods Mycologic examinations including direct microscopy and culture were performed on clinical samples. DNA extraction was performed from colonies. The ITS1 region of rDNA from isolates of Malassezia species were amplified by PCR reaction. The PCR were digested by Cfo I enzyme. Results From 70 skin samples, were microscopically positive for Malassezia elements, 60 samples were grown on culture medium (85.7%). Using PCR-RFLP method, that was performed on 60 isolates, 37(61.6%) M. globosa, 14(23.3%) M. furfur, 5(8.4%) M. sympodialis and 4(6.7%) M. restrictawere identified. In one case was isolated M. globosa along with M. restricta. Conclusion The PCR-RFLP method is a useful and reliable technique for identification of differentiation of Malas-sezia species.
Deposited in DRO : 17 May 2010 Version of attached le : Published Version Peer-review status of attached le : Peer-reviewed Citation for published item

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MOLECULAR INDICATORS OF TREE MIGRATION CAPACITY UNDER RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE

Recent models and analyses of paleoecological records suggest that tree populations are capable of rapid migration when climate warms. Fossil pollen is commonly interpreted as suggesting that the range of many temperate tree species expanded at rates of 100–1000 m/yr during the early Holocene. We used chloroplast DNA surveys to show that the geography of postglacial range expansion in two eastern North American tree species differs from that expected from pollen-based reconstructions and from patterns emerging from European molecular studies. Molecular evidence suggests that American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and red maple (Acer rubrum) persisted during the late glaciation as low-density populations, perhaps within 500 km of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Because populations were closer to modern range limits than previously thought, postglacial migration rates may have been slower than those inferred from fossil pollen. Our estimated rates of <100 m/yr are consistent with model predictions based on life histo.
Bacterial Succession in the Broiler Gastrointestinal Tract

ABSTRACT A feeding trial was performed with broilers receiving a diet of wheat-based feed (WBF), maize-based feed (MBF), or maize-based concentrates supplemented with 15% or 30% crimped kernel maize silage (CKMS-15 or CKMS-30, respectively). The aim of the study was to investigate the bacterial community compositions of the crop, gizzard, ileum, and cecum contents in relation to the feeding strategy and age (8, 15, 22, 25, 29, or 36 days). Among the four dietary treatments, bacterial diversity was analyzed for MBF and CKMS-30 by 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. Since the diets had no significant influence on bacterial diversity, data were pooled for downstream analysis. With increasing age, a clear succession of bacterial communities and increased bacterial diversity were observed. Lactobacillaceae (belonging mainly to the genus Lactobacillus) represented most of the Firmicutes at all ages and in all segments of the gut except the cecum. The development of a “mature” microbiota in broilers occurred during the period from days 15 to 22. Striking increases in the relative abundances of Lactobacillus salivarius (17 to 36%) and clostridia (11 to 18%), and a concomitant decrease in the relative abundance of Lactobacillus reuteri, were found in the ileum after day 15. The concentration of deconjugated bile salts increased in association with the increased populations of L. salivarius and clostridia. Both L. salivarius and clostridia deconjugate bile acids, and increases in the abundances of these bacteria might be associated with growth reduction and gastrointestinal (GI) disorders occurring in the critical period of broiler life between days 20 and 30.
Low-power logic styles: CMOS versus pass-transistor logic

Recently reported logic style comparisons based on full-adder circuits claimed complementary pass-transistor logic (CPL) to be much more power-efficient than complementary CMOS. However, new comparisons performed on more efficient CMOS circuit realizations and a wider range of different logic cells, as well as the use of realistic circuit arrangements demonstrate CMOS to be superior to CPL in most cases with respect to speed, area, power dissipation, and power-delay products. An implemented 32-b adder using complementary CMOS has a power-delay product of less than half that of the CPL version. Robustness with respect to voltage scaling and transistor sizing, as well as generality and ease-of-use, are additional advantages of CMOS logic gates, especially when cell-based design and logic synthesis are targeted. This paper shows that complementary CMOS is the logic style of choice for the implementation of arbitrary combinational circuits if low voltage, low power, and small power-delay products are of concern.