bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reliability Analysis of Defect-Containing Structures Using Partial Safety Factors
Authors: Wei Liwu
Published: February 2010

Some standards of structural integrity assessment such as BS 7910 and API 579-1/ASME FFS-1 recommend values of partial safety factor (PSF) applied to the deterministic engineering critical assessments of flaw-containing structures to achieve certain reliability levels. However, it is still uncertain as to whether the use of the PSFs can achieve the target reliability level specified in the codes, or excessively exceed the targets (un-conservative) or under-reach the targets (too conservative). This work was undertaken to make investigations into these issues raised from the use of PSFs through case studies involving deterministic fitness-for-service analysis incorporating PSFs and probabilistic fracture mechanics analysis. Two cases, a through-thickness crack and a surface-breaking elliptical crack in a plate subjected to tension, were considered. The results in terms of failure probability from the studied cases have shown a general trend that for each of the four PSFs recommended in BS 7910, the failure probability decreased as the assessments changed from the elastic fracture region to the plastic collapse region in the failure assessment diagram. Some over-conservatism has been found in certain situations from the use of PSFs recommended in BS 7910:2005. Cautions are given for application of the PSFs for integrity assessment of the structures and components containing flaws.
Linearization of Quadratic Drag to Estimate CALM Buoy Pitch Motion in Frequency-Domain and Experimental Validation
Authors: Salem Amir G. , Ryu Sam , Duggal Arun S. , Datla Raju V.
Published: February 2010

Estimate of the pitch motion of an oil offloading Catenary Anchor Leg Mooring (CALM) buoy is presented. Linearization of the quadratic drag/damping term is investigated by the frequency-domain analysis. The radiation problem is solved to estimate the added mass and radiation damping coefficients, and the diffraction problem is solved for the linear wave exciting loading. The equation of motion is solved by considering the linearized nonlinear drag/damping. The pitch motion response is evaluated at each wave frequency by iterative and various linearization methods of the nonlinear drag term. Comparisons between the linear and nonlinear damping effects are presented. Time-domain simulations of the buoy pitch motion were also compared with results from the frequency-domain analysis. Various linearization methods resulted in good estimate of the peak pitch response. However, only the stochastic linearization method shows a good agreement for the period range of the incident wave where typical pitch response estimate has not been correctly estimated.
Uncertainties of Wind Sea and Swell Prediction From the Torsethaugen Spectrum
Authors: Bitner-Gregersen Elzbieta M. , Toffoli Alessandro
Published: February 2010

In practical applications, it is usually assumed that the wave spectrum is of a single mode form, and well modelled by a JONSWAP or Pierson-Moskowitz spectrum. This assumption is of a reasonable accuracy for severe sea states. However, moderated and low sea states are often of a combined nature, consisting of both wind-sea and swell and should be characterized by a double peak spectrum. Bimodal seas can have a significant impact on the design and operability of fixed and floating offshore structures as well as LNG terminals. Although several separation procedures for the wave components exist the bimodal Torsethaugen spectrum is probably the only one well established in design work. This spectrum was developed primarily for one location at the Norwegian Continental Shelf (Statfjord Field) but in qualitative terms is expected to be of much broader validity. The present study discusses applicability of the Torsethaugen spectrum for locations outside the Norwegian Continental Shelf and uncertainties related to use of the spectrum.
Scratch properties of nickel thin films using atomic force microscopy
Authors: Tseng Ampere A. , Shirakashi Jun-ichi , Jou Shyankay , Huang Jen-Ching , Chen T. P.
Published: February 2010

Experiments using atomic force microscopy (AFM) as a machining tool for scratching patterns on nickel thin films have been conducted with an emphasis on establishing the material scratchability or more general, the nanoscale machinability. The effects of the scratch parameters, including the applied tip force and scratch direction, on the size of the scratched geometry were investigated. The primary factors that measure the scratchability were then assessed. The scratchability of Ni as compared to that of Si was specifically evaluated and discussed. A stress-hardness analysis was also performed to further validate the experimental and correlation results. All results indicate that the Ni thin film possesses excellent scratchability and one order of magnitude higher than that of Si. Based on the correlation formula developed, Ni should be able to be precisely scratched by AFM tip with the required dimension and nanoscale accuracy and precision.
Genetic variants regulating insulin receptor signalling are associated with the severity of liver damage in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Authors: Dongiovanni P , Valenti L , Rametta R , Daly A K , Nobili V , Mozzi E , Leathart J B S , Pietrobattista A , Burt A D , Maggioni M , Fracanzani A L , Lattuada E , Zappa M A , Roviaro G , Marchesini G , Day C P , Fargion S
Published: February 2010

Background/aims

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of functional ENPP1(ectoenzyme nucleotide pyrophosphate phosphodiesterase 1)/PC-1 (plasma cell antigen-1) and IRS-1 (insulin receptor substrate-1) polymorphisms influencing insulin receptor activity on liver damage in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the hepatic manifestation of the metabolic syndrome, whose progression is associated with the severity of insulin resistance.

Patients and methods

702 patients with biopsy-proven NAFLD from Italy and the UK, and 310 healthy controls. The Lys121Gln ENPP1/PC-1 and the Gly972Arg IRS-1 polymorphisms were evaluated by restriction analysis. Fibrosis was evaluated according to Kleiner. Insulin signalling activity was evaluated by measuring phosphoAKT levels by western blotting in a subset of obese non-diabetic patients.

Results

The ENPP1 121Gln and IRS-1 972Arg polymorphisms were detected in 28.7% and 18.1% of patients and associated with increased body weight/dyslipidaemia and diabetes risk, respectively. The ENPP1 121Gln allele was significantly associated with increased prevalence of fibrosis stage >1 and >2, which was higher in subjects also positive for the 972Arg IRS-1 polymorphism. At multivariate analysis, the presence of the ENPP1 121Gln and IRS-1 972Arg polymorphisms was independently associated with fibrosis >1 (OR 1.55, 95% CI 1.24 to 1.97; and OR 1.57, 95% CI 1.12 to 2.23, respectively). Both polymorphisms were associated with a marked reduction of ∼70% of AKT activation status, reflecting insulin resistance and disease severity, in obese patients with NAFLD.

Conclusions

The ENPP1 121Gln and IRS-1 972Arg polymorphisms affecting insulin receptor activity predispose to liver damage and decrease hepatic insulin signalling in patients with NAFLD. Defective insulin signalling may play a causal role in the progression of liver damage in NAFLD.
PROTEIN SUBCELLULAR MULTI-LOCALIZATION PREDICTION USING A MIN-MAX MODULAR SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE
Authors: YANG YANG , LU BAO-LIANG
Published: February 2010

Prediction of protein subcellular localization is an important issue in computational biology because it provides important clues for the characterization of protein functions. Currently, much research has been dedicated to developing automatic prediction tools. Most, however, focus on mono-locational proteins, i.e., they assume that proteins exist in only one location. It should be noted that many proteins bear multi-locational characteristics and carry out crucial functions in biological processes. This work aims to develop a general pattern classifier for predicting multiple subcellular locations of proteins. We use an ensemble classifier, called the min-max modular support vector machine (M3-SVM), to solve protein subcellular multi-localization problems; and, propose a module decomposition method based on gene ontology (GO) semantic information for M3-SVM. The amino acid composition with secondary structure and solvent accessibility information is adopted to represent features of protein sequences. We apply our method to two multi-locational protein data sets. The M3-SVMs show higher accuracy and efficiency than traditional SVMs using the same feature vectors. And the GO decomposition also helps to improve prediction accuracy. Moreover, our method has a much higher rate of accuracy than existing subcellular localization predictors in predicting protein multi-localization.
DISCRETE-TIME REDUCED ORDER NEURAL OBSERVERS FOR UNCERTAIN NONLINEAR SYSTEMS
Authors: ALANIS ALMA Y. , SANCHEZ EDGAR N. , RICALDE LUIS J.
Published: February 2010

This paper focusses on a novel discrete-time reduced order neural observer for nonlinear systems, which model is assumed to be unknown. This neural observer is robust in presence of external and internal uncertainties. The proposed scheme is based on a discrete-time recurrent high order neural network (RHONN) trained with an extended Kalman filter (EKF)-based algorithm, using a parallel configuration. This work includes the stability proof of the estimation error on the basis of the Lyapunov approach; to illustrate the applicability, simulation results for a nonlinear oscillator are included.
A NEW NEURAL OBSERVER FOR AN ANAEROBIC BIOREACTOR
Authors: BELMONTE-IZQUIERDO R. , CARLOS-HERNANDEZ S. , SANCHEZ E. N.
Published: February 2010

In this paper, a recurrent high order neural observer (RHONO) for anaerobic processes is proposed. The main objective is to estimate variables of methanogenesis: biomass, substrate and inorganic carbon in a completely stirred tank reactor (CSTR). The recurrent high order neural network (RHONN) structure is based on the hyperbolic tangent as activation function. The learning algorithm is based on an extended Kalman filter (EKF). The applicability of the proposed scheme is illustrated via simulation. A validation using real data from a lab scale process is included. Thus, this observer can be successfully implemented for control purposes.
MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF A NOVEL MICROWAVE SENSOR BASED ON WAVEGUIDE FILLING WITH A METAMATERIAL PARTICLE
Authors: SUN JUN , HUANG MING , YANG JINGJING , PENG JINHUI , SHI JIHONG
Published: February 2010

A novel microwave sensor based on waveguide filled with a metamaterial particle, which is composed of meander line and split-ring-resonator (SRR), is presented and modeled using a full wave electromagnetic commercial simulator CST. Simulating results show that evanescent mode are enhanced and transmitted through the structured particle within the frequency band that exhibits negative permittivity and permeability. Evanescent mode is sensitive to permittivity of dielectric material in the detecting zone. Comparing with conventional microwave resonant sensor, the microwave sensor using evanescent mode allows for much higher detection sensitivity.
THERMODYNAMIC PROPERTIES OF MgSiO3 POST-PEROVSKITE
Authors: LIU ZI-JIANG , SUN XIAO-WEI , ZHANG CAI-RONG , TIAN LI-NA , GUO YUAN
Published: February 2010

The thermodynamic properties of MgSiO 3 post-perovskite are predicted at high pressures and temperatures using the Debye model for the first time. This model combines with ab initio calculations within local density approximation using pseudopotentials and a plane wave basis in the framework of density functional theory, and it takes into account the phononic effects within the quasi-harmonic approximation. It is found that the calculated equation of state of MgSiO 3 post-perovskite is in excellent agreement with the latest observed values. Based on the first-principles study and the Debye model, the thermal properties including the Debye temperature, the heat capacity, the thermal expansion, and the entropy are obtained in the whole pressure range from 0 to 150 GPa and temperature range from 0 to 2000 K.
CLASSIFICATION OF ALL ENVELOPE TRAVELING WAVE SOLUTIONS TO (2+1)-DIMENSIONAL DAVEY–STEWARTSON EQUATION
Authors: SHU YANG
Published: February 2010

Using the complete discrimination system for polynomial method, we study the (2+1)-dimensional Davey–Stewartson equation and obtain the classifications of all its envelope traveling wave solutions. This is very convenient in practice to give the corresponding solutions for the concrete parameters.
DIELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF BaTiO3+MgCuZnFe2O4 NANOCOMPOSITES
Authors: SADHANA K. , PRAVEENA K. , MURTHY S. R.
Published: February 2010

Nanocrystalline MgCuZnFe 2 O 4 and BaTiO 3 powders were synthesized using the microwave hydrothermal (M-H) method at 160°C for 45 min for the preparation of x BaTiO 3+(1-x) MgCuZnFe 2 O 4. The nanopowders were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The particle size of the powders was found to be ~30 and ~40 nm for MgCuZnFe 2 O 4 and BaTiO 3, respectively. The nanopowders were mixed at different weight percentages and densified at 910°C for 30 min using the microwave sintering method. The sintered composites were characterized using XRD and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The density of the composites varies 93–96% of theoretical density. The density of the present composites increases as the weight percentage of BaTiO 3 content increases. The frequency variation of dielectric constant (ε), dissipation factor (D), initial permeability (μi) and quality factor (Q) were measured from 1 kHz to 1 MHz.
NANOSTRUCTURING SOLID SURFACES WITH FEMTOSECOND LASER IRRADIATIONS FOR APPLICATIONS
Authors: SHEN MENGYAN
Published: February 2010

Pulsed laser-assisted etching is a simple but effective method for fabricating small regular structures directly onto a surface. We have successfully fabricated submicro- or nano-meter sized spikes on a solid surface immersed in liquids with femtosecond laser pulse irradiations. This method is applicable to different metals such as stainless steel, copper, titanium, cobalt, as well as different semiconductors, such as Si and GaAs. The femtosecond laser method is much faster than other methods. We can control the experimental conditions to design and fabricate nanostructures in different materials and on the surfaces with different morphologies. Here, we discuss the nanostructures formation with femtosecond pulse laser irradiations, and introduce our results of the nanostructure for applications in sensing, biology and artificial photosynthesis. The femtosecond laser irradiation technique can efficiently integrate metal, semiconductor and polymer nanostructures in various small devices to leverage the expertise in other research fields and applications.
EMPLOYING FUZZY C-MEANS FOR DNA TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR BINDING SITE IDENTIFICATION
Authors: İBRİKCİ TURGAY , KARABULUT MUSTAFA
Published: February 2010

DNA motif discovery is an important task since it helps to better understand the regulation of the transcription in the protein synthesis process. This paper introduces a novel method for the task of DNA motif finding where the proposed method adopts machine-learning approach by the use of a well-known clustering algorithm, Fuzzy C-Means. The method is explained in detail and tested against DNA sequences extracted from the genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli organisms. Experimental results suggest that the algorithm is efficient in finding statistically interesting features existing in the DNA sequences. The comparison of the algorithm with the well-known motif finding tools, MEME and MDScan, which are built on statistical and word-enumerative models, shows the advantages of the proposed method over the existing tools and the promising direction of the machine-learning approach.
PSO- AND GA-BASED NARROWBAND JAMMER EXCISION IN CDMA
Authors: ZAKA IMRAN , REHMAN HABIB UR , SHAH SYED ISMAIL , AHMAD JAMIL
Published: February 2010

Narrowband jammer excision is formulated as an optimization problem in this paper. Optimal filter weights are calculated/searched for by the computational intelligence techniques. We compare the error rate performance, complexity, and implementation issues of various computational intelligence techniques like Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithm, and Least Mean Square (LMS). These techniques update the excision filter weights iteratively till the convergence criteria has been achieved. Bit Error Rate performance shows these techniques effectively suppress the Narrow Band Interference. It has been observed that PSO-based algorithm with tuned parameters outperforms other schemes of PSO and the other algorithms. It approaches the optimum performance in fewer iterations with ease in implementation.
A FUZZY LOGIC-BASED APPROACH TO TWO-DIMENSIONAL AUTOMOBILE WARRANTY SYSTEM
Authors: LEE SANG-HYUN , LEE SANG-JOON , MOON KYUNG-IL
Published: February 2010

Many attributes contribute to product failures that result in warranty claims. In particular, there are situations where several attributes are used together as criteria for judging the warranty eligibility of a failed product. For example, automobiles warranty coverage has both age and mileage limits. The warranty policy characterized by a region in a two-dimensional plane with one axis representing product age and the other axis representing product usage is known as the "two-attribute" warranty policy. A number of procedures have been developed for analyzing the two-dimensional warranty policy. These procedures use many crisp data obtained from strictly controlled reliability tests. However, in real situations, these requirements might not be fulfilled. In extreme cases, the warranty claims data come from users whose reports are expressed in a vague way. This may be due to subjective and imprecise perception of failures by a user, imprecise warranty data record, or imprecise rate of usage record. This paper suggests fuzziness as an alternative to randomness for describing the two-dimensional warranty uncertainty. A new sets-as-points geometric view of fuzzy warranty sets is developed in this study. This view can reduce many errors of estimation and prediction of the cost associated with a variety of warranty policies including the "two-attribute" warranties and some reliability improvement warranties.
AN IMPROVED VIRTUAL 3D CA PRNG BASED ON MOORE NEIGHBORHOOD METHOD
Authors: SHIN SANG-HO , YOO KEE-YOUNG
Published: February 2010

The security of most of the cryptosystems depend on the secret key generator. However, implementation for hardwares, of this key generator is inefficient because secret key generators depend on mathematical problem to generate the high randomness quality. Cellular automata (CA) pseudorandom number generator (PRNG) is more efficiently implemented rather than mathematical problem based PRNGs because a structure of CA PRNG is highly regular and simpler than the other PRNGs. In this paper, a virtual three-dimension (3D) CA PRNG based on the Moore neighborhood structure is proposed. The proposed PRNG uses new methods which are the rule numbering function that provides a high-quality randomness and cell position function that diminishes correlations between global states. In order to evaluate the quality of randomness, the ENT and DIEHARD test suites are used. The results of these tests show that the quality of randomness is superior to previous PRNGs.
IMAGE REGISTRATION AND FUSION SYSTEM BASED ON GPU
Authors: YOO SEUNG-HUN , JEONG CHANG-SUNG
Published: February 2010

Graphics processing unit (GPU) has surfaced as a high-quality platform for computer vision-related systems. In this paper, we propose a straightforward system consisting of a registration and a fusion method over GPU, which generates good results at high speed, compared to non-GPU-based systems. Our GPU-accelerated system utilizes existing methods through converting the methods into the GPU-based platform. The registration method uses point correspondences to find a registering transformation estimated with the incremental parameters in a coarse-to-fine way, while the fusion algorithm uses multi-scale methods to fuse the results from the registration stage. We evaluate performance with the same methods that are executed over both CPU-only and GPU-mounted environment. The experiment results present convincing evidences of the efficiency of our system, which is tested on a few pairs of aerial images taken by electro-optical and infrared sensors to provide visual information of a scene for environmental observatories.
AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH FOR IMPUTING MISSING DATA IN TIME SERIES
Authors: FIGUEROA GARCÍA JUAN CARLOS , KALENATIC DUSKO , LÓPEZ BELLO CESAR AMILCAR
Published: February 2010

This paper presents a proposal based on an evolutionary algorithm for imputing missing observations in time series. A genetic algorithm based on the minimization of an error function derived from their autocorrelation function, mean, and variance is presented.

All methodological aspects of the genetic structure are presented. An extended description of the design of the fitness function is provided. Four application examples are provided and solved by using the proposed method.
FACTOR ANALYSIS FOR CROSS-PLATFORM TUMOR CLASSIFICATION BASED ON GENE EXPRESSION PROFILES
Authors: WANG SHU-LIN , GUI JIE , LI XUELING
Published: February 2010

Previous studies on tumor classification based on feature extraction from gene expression profiles (GEP) were proven to be effective, but some of such methods lack biomedical meaning to some extent. To deal with this problem, we proposed a novel feature extraction method whose experimental results are of biomedical interpretability and helpful for gaining insight into the structure analysis of gene expression dataset. This method first applied rank sum test to roughly select a set of informative genes and then adopted factor analysis to extract latent factors for tumor classification. Experiments on three pairs of cross-platform tumor datasets indicated that the proposed method can obviously improve the performance of cross-platform classification and only several latent factors, which can represent a large number of informative genes, would obtain very high predictive accuracy on test set. The results also suggested that the classification model trained on one dataset can successfully predict another tumor dataset with the same tumor subtype obtained on different experimental platforms.
WEIGHTED NEIGHBORHOOD CLASSIFIER FOR THE CLASSIFICATION OF IMBALANCED TUMOR DATASET
Authors: WANG SHU-LIN , LI XUELING , XIA JUN-FENG , Zhang Xiao-Ping
Published: February 2010

Machine learning is widely applied to gene expression profiles based molecular tumor classification, but sample imbalance problem is often overlooked. This paper proposed a subclass-weighted neighborhood classifier to address the imbalanced sample set problem and a novel neighborhood rough set model to select informative genes for classification performance improvement. Experiments on three publicly available tumor datasets demonstrated that the proposed method is obviously effective on imbalanced dataset with obscure boundary between two subtypes and informative gene selection and it can achieve higher cross-validation accuracy with much fewer tumor-related genes.
SELF-ADAPTIVE LEARNING CLASSIFIER SYSTEM
Authors: UNOLD OLGIERD
Published: February 2010

This article introduces a new kind of self-adaptation in discovery mechanism of learning classifier system XCS. Unlike the previous approaches, which incorporate self-adaptive parameters in the representation of an individual, proposed model evolves competitive population of the reduced XCSs, which are able to adapt both classifiers and genetic parameters. The experimental comparisons of self-adaptive mutation rate XCS and standard XCS interacting with 11-bit, 20-bit, and 37-bit multiplexer environment were provided. It has been shown that adapting the mutation rate can give an equivalent or better performance to known good fixed parameter settings, especially for computationally complex tasks. Moreover, the self-adaptive XCS is able to solve the problem of inappropriate for a standard XCS parameters.
THEORETICAL STUDY ON ADSORBATE-INDUCED SURFACE STRESS IN THE SELF-ASSEMBLY OF ALKANETHIOLS ON GOLD
Authors: XIE RONG
Published: February 2010

By using established statistical thermodynamic theory of adsorbate-induced surface stress of adsorption monolayer on metal surface, the surface stress Δg in the self-assembly of alkanethiols on Au (111) surface has been calculated. The quantitative relations of the surface stress Δg with the length N of the alkyl chain of the molecule and with the coverage θ of molecules on Au (111) have been theoretically studied, respectively. The calculated results agree with Berger et al.'s experiment. The qualitative discrepancy between the theory and experiment on the sign of the surface stress has been resolved. Among various components of the adsorbate–adsorbate interaction energies in the adlayer, the substrate-mediated interaction is significant for the adsorbate-induced surface stress, which shows that indirect contribution of the adsorption energy of alkanethiols through the substrate-mediated interaction is very important.
A DENSITY FUNCTIONAL STUDY OF SMALL NIOBIUM CLUSTERS
Authors: ALVARADO-LEYVA PEDRO G. , SOSA-HERNÁNDEZ ELISA M.
Published: February 2010

Geometrical structures of Nb n clusters up to n = 7 are calculated at the B3LYP/LanL2DZ level. The average binding energy, along the local magnetic moments, is calculated, together with the HOMO–LUMO gap and the mean bond length. The ground-state structures of niobium clusters favor higher-dimensional configuration and higher coordination number. The average binding energy increases with the number of atoms and the magnetic order into the clusters depends on the cluster size, all the clusters present a HOMO–LUMO gap larger than 1 eV.
INFLUENCE OF THE ULTRASONIC VIBRATION ON CHEMICAL BATH DEPOSITION OF ZnS THIN FILMS
Authors: LIU QI , MAO GUOBING
Published: February 2010

Chemical bath deposition (CBD) and ultrasonic chemical bath deposition (US-CBD) of ZnS thin films from NH 4 OH/SC ( NH 2)2/ ZnSO 4 solutions have been studied. The influence of the ultrasonic vibration on properties of ZnS thin films has been investigated. The growth rate, structure, and properties of ZnS thin film deposited by different CBD techniques were studied using X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and atomic force microscope (AFM). The results show that the growth rate of US-CBD is slower than that of CBD. The XRD analysis of as-deposited ZnS films shows that the films are both cubic ZnS structure and the crystallinity of US-CBD ZnS film is higher than that of CBD ZnS film. SEM studies indicate that adhesion particles on the US-CBD ZnS surface are fewer than that on the CBD ZnS surface. Moreover, the film prepared by US-CBD is homogeneous and with high compactness. The rms roughness (R rms ) value of CBD ZnS film is higher than that of US-CBD. Transmission measurement shows that the optical transmittance of US-CBD ZnS is higher than that of CBD ZnS , and the optical transmittance is above 90% when the wavelength is over 470 nm. The band gap (Eg) values of the films deposited by CBD and US-CBD are 3.50 and 3.67 eV, respectively.
STRUCTURAL AND OPTICAL PROPERTIES OF LARGE-SCALE ZnO NANOWIRES AND NANOSHEETS PREPARED BY DRY THERMAL OXIDATION
Authors: TNEH S. S. , ABU HASSAN H. , SAW K. G. , YAM F. K. , HASSAN Z.
Published: February 2010

In this work, we report the morphology and optical properties of zinc oxide ( ZnO ) layers prepared by dry thermal oxidation at different annealing conditions. Morphology studies using scanning electron microscope (SEM) show that the amount of nanowires and nanosheets increases with the introduction of a flow of O2 gas. High-resolution X-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) data show that typical polycrystalline ZnO nanostructure layers have been deposited. Near-perfect stoichiometry of Zn and O atom vacancies has been observed from energy dispersion spectroscopy (EDS) spectrum. Photoluminescence (PL) spectra show strong peaks at UV and green regions. An increase in the stoichiometry of ZnO has been achieved with the oxygen gas flow during annealing indicating that deep-level defects represented by interstitial oxygen and antisite oxygen are gas pressure dependent. A single exciton peak with binding energy 60 meV has been observed at room temperature.
FORMATION OF COMBINED SURFACE FEATURES OF PROTRUSION ARRAY AND WRINKLES ATOP SHAPE-MEMORY POLYMER
Authors: SUN L. , ZHAO Y. , HUANG W. M. , TONG T. H.
Published: February 2010

We demonstrate a simple and cost-effective approach to realize two combined surface features of different scales together, namely submillimeter-sized protrusion array and microwrinkles, atop a polystyrene shape-memory polymer. Two different types of protrusions, namely flat-top protrusion and crown-shaped protrusion, were studied. The array of protrusions was produced by the Indentation-Polishing-Heating (IPH) process. Compactly packed steel balls were used for making array of indents. A thin gold layer was sputter deposited atop the polymer surface right after polishing. After heating for shape recovery, array of protrusions with wrinkles on the top due to the buckling of gold layer was produced.
THE HYDROGENATION OF ETHYLBENZENE OVER NANO NiMo CATALYSTS
Authors: SHENG JINGYUN , YI XIAODONG , XIE QI , LI FENG , JIN HAO , FANG WEIPING
Published: February 2010

The hydrogenation activity and sulfur-tolerant ability of nano- NiMo catalysts prepared by sol–gel method were investigated by hydrogenation of ethylbenzene containing thiophene. The results show that the adding of molybdenum has a profound effect on the structure and the sulfur-tolerant ability of nickel-based catalyst. The catalyst with MoNi ratio of 0.16 showed maximum hydrogenation activity and good sulfur resistance when compared to other catalysts. It seems that new hydrogen-adsorbed phase is formed at high temperature and the quantity of hydrogen adsorbed increases greatly when Mo is added to the nickel-based catalysts.
MINING DISEASE STATE CONVERTERS FOR MEDICAL INTERVENTION OF DISEASES
Authors: DONG GUOZHU , DUAN LEI , TANG CHANGJIE
Published: February 2010

In applications such as gene therapy and drug design, a key goal is to convert the disease state of diseased objects from an undesirable state into a desirable one. Such conversions may be achieved by changing the values of some attributes of the objects. For example, in gene therapy one may convert cancerous cells to normal ones by changing some genes' expression level from low to high or from high to low. In this paper, we define the disease state conversion problem as the discovery of disease state converters; a disease state converter is a small set of attribute value changes that may change an object's disease state from undesirable into desirable. We consider two variants of this problem: personalized disease state converter mining mines disease state converters for a given individual patient with a given disease, and universal disease state converter mining mines disease state converters for all samples with a given disease. We propose a DSCMiner algorithm to discover small and highly effective disease state converters. Since real-life medical experiments on living diseased instances are expensive and time consuming, we use classifiers trained from the datasets of given diseases to evaluate the quality of discovered converter sets. The effectiveness of a disease state converter is measured by the percentage of objects that are successfully converted from undesirable state into desirable state as deemed by state-of-the-art classifiers. We use experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of our algorithm and to show its effectiveness. We also discuss possible research directions for extensions and improvements. We note that the disease state conversion problem also has applications in customer retention, criminal rehabilitation, and company turn-around, where the goal is to convert class membership of objects whose class is an undesirable class.
A MULTI-STRATEGY APPROACH TO INFORMATIVE GENE IDENTIFICATION FROM GENE EXPRESSION DATA
Authors: LIU ZIYING , PHAN SIEU , FAMILI FAZEL , PAN YOULIAN , LENFERINK ANNE E. G. , CANTIN CHRISTIANE , COLLINS CATHERINE , O'CONNOR-MCCOURT MAUREEN D.
Published: February 2010

An unsupervised multi-strategy approach has been developed to identify informative genes from high throughput genomic data. Several statistical methods have been used in the field to identify differentially expressed genes. Since different methods generate different lists of genes, it is very challenging to determine the most reliable gene list and the appropriate method. This paper presents a multi-strategy method, in which a combination of several data analysis techniques are applied to a given dataset and a confidence measure is established to select genes from the gene lists generated by these techniques to form the core of our final selection. The remainder of the genes that form the peripheral region are subject to exclusion or inclusion into the final selection. This paper demonstrates this methodology through its application to an in-house cancer genomics dataset and a public dataset. The results indicate that our method provides more reliable list of genes, which are validated using biological knowledge, biological experiments, and literature search. We further evaluated our multi-strategy method by consolidating two pairs of independent datasets, each pair is for the same disease, but generated by different labs using different platforms. The results showed that our method has produced far better results.
THE VALUE OF AN IN-DOMAIN LEXICON IN GENOMICS QA
Authors: SASAKI YUTAKA , MCNAUGHT JOHN , ANANIADOU SOPHIA
Published: February 2010

This paper demonstrates that a large-scale lexicon tailored for the biology domain is effective in improving question analysis for genomics Question Answering (QA). We use the TREC Genomics Track data to evaluate the performance of different question analysis methods. It is hard to process textual information in biology, especially in molecular biology, due to a huge number of technical terms which rarely appear in general English documents and dictionaries. To support biological Text Mining, we have developed a domain-specific resource, the BioLexicon. Started in 2006 from scratch, this lexicon currently includes more than four million biomedical terms consisting of newly curated terms and terms collected from existing biomedical databases. While conventional genomics QA systems provide query expansion based on thesauri and dictionaries, it is not clear to what extent a biology-oriented lexical resource is effective for question pre-processing for genomics QA. Experiments on the genomics QA data set show that question analysis using the BioLexicon performs slightly better than that using n-grams and the UMLS Specialist Lexicon.
TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT STRUCTURAL VARIABILITY OF RNAs: SPLICED LEADER RNAs AND THEIR EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY
Authors: MARZ MANJA , VANZO NATHALIE , STADLER PETER F.
Published: February 2010

The structures attained by RNA molecules depend not only on their sequence but also on environmental parameters such as their temperature. So far, this effect has been largely neglected in bioinformatics studies. Here, we show that structural comparisons can be facilitated and more coherent structural models can be obtained when differences in environmental parameters are taken into account. We re-evaluate the secondary structures of the spliced leader (SL) RNAs from the seven eukaryotic phyla in which SL RNA trans-splicing has been described. Adjusting structure prediction to the natural growth temperatures and considering energetically similar secondary structures, we observe striking similarities among Euglenida, Kinetoplastida, Dinophyceae, Cnidaria, Rotifera, Nematoda, Platyhelminthes, and Tunicata that cannot be explained easily by the independent innovation of SL RNAs in each of these phyla. Supplementary Table is available at .
IDENTIFYING CO-REGULATING MICRORNA GROUPS
Authors: AN JIYUAN , CHOI KWOK PUI , WELLS CHRISTINE A. , CHEN YI-PING PHOEBE
Published: February 2010

Background: Current miRNA target prediction tools have the common problem that their false positive rate is high. This renders identification of co-regulating groups of miRNAs and target genes unreliable. In this study, we describe a procedure to identify highly probable co-regulating miRNAs and the corresponding co-regulated gene groups. Our procedure involves a sequence of statistical tests: (1) identify genes that are highly probable miRNA targets; (2) determine for each such gene, the minimum number of miRNAs that co-regulate it with high probability; (3) find, for each such gene, the combination of the determined minimum size of miRNAs that co-regulate it with the lowest p-value; and (4) discover for each such combination of miRNAs, the group of genes that are co-regulated by these miRNAs with the lowest p-value computed based on GO term annotations of the genes. Results: Our method identifies 4, 3 and 2-term miRNA groups that co-regulate gene groups of size at least 3 in human. Our result suggests some interesting hypothesis on the functional role of several miRNAs through a "guilt by association" reasoning. For example, miR-130, miR-19 and miR-101 are known neurodegenerative diseases associated miRNAs. Our 3-term miRNA table shows that miR-130/19/101 form a co-regulating group of rank 22 (p-value =1.16 × 10-2). Since miR-144 is co-regulating with miR-130, miR-19 and miR-101 of rank 4 (p-value = 1.16 × 10-2) in our 4-term miRNA table, this suggests hsa-miR-144 may be neurodegenerative diseases related miRNA. Conclusions: This work identifies highly probable co-regulating miRNAs, which are refined from the prediction by computational tools using (1) signal-to-noise ratio to get high accurate regulating miRNAs for every gene, and (2) Gene Ontology to obtain functional related co-regulating miRNA groups. Our result has partly been supported by biological experiments. Based on prediction by TargetScanS, we found highly probable target gene groups in the Supplementary Information. This result might help biologists to find small set of miRNAs for genes of interest rather than huge amount of miRNA set. Supplementary Information:.
High-Efficiency InGaN-Based Yellow-Green Light-Emitting Diodes
Authors: Lai Mu-Jen , Jeng Ming-Jer , Chang Liann-Be
Published: February 2010

We demonstrate the characteristics of high-efficiency yellow-green InGaN-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with a strain-accommodative layer and textured surface. The LEDs have chip dimensions of 420×350 µm2 and are packaged in the conventional lamp form. The peak wavelength, optical output power, luminaire efficiency, and external quantum efficiency are 560.7 nm, 0.926 mW, 7.8 lm/W, and 2.1%, respectively, at a driving current of 20 mA. In addition, the output power slope (mW/mA) is 3.3×10-2. It is found that there is potential to improve external quantum efficiency by introducing a chirp InGaN/GaN superlattice structure as the strain-accommodative layer and texturing the surface of the top P-layer in yellow-green InGaN/GaN LEDs. The low power slope can be attributed chiefly to the inferior crystalline quality due to unfavorable growth conditions of InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells and partially to the stronger internal electric field due to the higher In composition in InGaN wells.
Effects of Additives on the Densification and Microwave Dielectric Properties of Binary CaO–B2O3–SiO2 Glass
Authors: Wang Sea-Fue , Chiang Chuang-Chung , Wang Yuh-Ruey , Hsu Yung-Fu
Published: February 2010

Glass systems, consisting of binary CaO–B2O3–SiO2 (CBS) glass (referred to as glass AB) and various amounts of Li2CO3, TiO2, and Al2O3 additives, were prepared in this study. The effects of the additives on the densification and microwave dielectric properties of binary CBS glass were investigated. Binary glass AB was not densified until the sintering temperature reached 875 °C; however, with the addition of 1 wt % Li2CO3 (referred to as glass L1), the glass achieved a maximum density at 825 °C. The resultant glass-ceramics contained a major phase quartz, SiO2, and a minor phase, CaB2O4, and had a dielectric constant (ε
r) varying from 4.10 to 4.23 and a minimum tan
δ of 0.0015, as frequency increased from 4.3 to 18.6 GHz. For glass L1 with further addition of the ceramic filler Al2O3 (up to 30 wt %), the maximum densification was reached at 775 °C and the formation of CaB2O3 and SiO2 crystallites was suppressed. Both ε
r and tan
δ increased with the Al2O3 content of the glass-ceramics. Further addition of the crystallization agent TiO2 (up to 5 wt %) to glass L1 slightly reduced the sintering temperature to 800 °C. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) intensities of the quartz SiO2 and CaB2O4 crystallites as well as the ε
r and tan
δ values of the resultant glass-ceramic increased with the amount of TiO2 added.
Evidence of the Inhomogeneous Ce3+Distribution across Grain Boundaries in Transparent Polycrystalline Ce3+-Doped (Gd,Y)3Al5O12Garnet Optical Ceramics
Authors: Zhao Wei , Mancini Cedric , Amans David , Boulon Georges , Epicier Thierry , Min Yin , Yagi Hideki , Yanagitani Takagimi , Yanagida Takayuki , Yoshikawa Akira
Published: February 2010

This paper characterizes the inhomogeneous rare earth activator distribution across grain boundaries in transparent rare earth doped optical ceramics. Ce3+has been selected due to its high intensity fluorescence in visible range under blue or UV excitations, especially in (Gd,Y)3Al5O12disordered garnet ceramic for scintillator application. Optical spectroscopy and visualization of grains and grain boundaries based on spatially resolved techniques as imaging confocal microscopy (ICM) and transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) have been used for 0.5% Ce3+-doped (Gd,Y)3Al5O12ceramic. A strong Ce3+segregation and spatial distribution between grains and grain boundaries were observed.
An Accurate and Simplified Modeling of Energy and Momentum Relaxation Rates for Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Device Simulation
Authors: Yamaguchi Ken , Sakurai Shogo , Tomizawa Kazutaka
Published: February 2010

An accurate and simplified modeling for the energy and momentum relaxation rates has been proposed for simulating a velocity overshoot of electrons in metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The relaxation rate has been featured by electron energy (w), gate field (E
G), and impurity-doping concentration (N
I). When the rate is defined by f
inv in the inversion layer and by f
bulk in bulk, the relaxation rate (r) in the whole area of MOSFETs can be modeled by an envelope function; r=max
( f
inv, f
bulk). Based on the Boltzmann equation, relation of the relaxation rate to w, E
G, and N
I has been studied and a simple modeling for r(w,E
G,N
I) has been developed. The rate can be expressed by a combination of one-dimensional data arrays. By using the simple modeling, the rate has been readily determined with the help of Monte Carlo simulation, and the validity of the rate modeling has been demonstrated by carrying out device simulation.
An Efficient Quantum-Based Model for the Threshold Voltage of Thin Film Double Gate/Silicon on Insulator Silicon Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors
Authors: Mohammadi Saeed , Afzali-Kusha Ali
Published: February 2010

In this paper, an efficient non-iterative approach for calculating the threshold voltage of nanoscale double gate n-channel metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (nMOSFET) is presented. First, it is shown that the parabolic potential is a reasonable approximation for the body potential along the coordinate normal to the interfaces at the threshold of conduction. Then, the eigen functions and eigen values of confined carriers are determined by solving the Schrödinger's equation using the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin (WKB) approximation. All the coefficients of the potential polynomial are obtained analytically at the threshold condition. To assess the accuracy of the proposed model, its predictions have been compared to the results of a numerical simulator and a previously published model. It is observed that the approach can accurately yet efficiently predict the threshold voltage for both symmetric and asymmetric double gate structures as well as fully depleted silicon on insulator (SOI) structures with intrinsic or doped body.
Stress in Tin-Doped Indium Oxide Thin Films Formed on Substrates by Sputtering
Authors: Nomura Hideshi , Shimizu Kazuharu
Published: February 2010

Films of tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) were prepared on silicon and soda lime glass substrates at different temperatures during sputtering. Stresses in the ITO films were measured during a uniform thermal annealing cycle in nitrogen atmosphere. A larger compressive residual stress arose in the ITO film when the substrate temperature of the film deposition was higher than that before annealing. The residual stress in the film on the silicon substrate was changed to tensile stress at room temperature after annealing when the film was formed at under the crystallization temperature of indium oxide. It was found that the consistency of low resistivity with small stress in an ITO film could be realized by high-temperature annealing after low-temperature sputtering. The surface morphology of the ITO film indicated a change in biaxial elastic modulus, which is related to thermal stress. From the results of X-ray diffraction analysis, it was suggested that the misorientation between volumes of crystals in an ITO film increased with increasing intrinsic stress.
Synthesis and Characterization of Single Crystal NiMnSb
Authors: Wang Fangfang , Fukuhara Tadashi , Maezawa Kunihiko , Nishimura Katsuhiko , Shimizu Fumihiko , Masubuchi Shinichi
Published: February 2010

An attempt to prepare high-quality single crystals of NiMnSb is reported. A high-quality polycrystal, used as a starting material of single-crystal growth, was prepared from the stoichiometric nominal composition. Large single crystals were grown using the Bridgman method with a sealed Mo crucible. Annealing under ultra high vacuum (ca. 10-10 Torr) improves the quality of the single crystal. The resultant single crystals exhibit no anomaly suggesting a magnetic transition in transport properties below room temperature.
X-ray Study of Step Induced Lateral Correlation Lengths in Thin AlGaN Nucleation Layers
Authors: Wieneke Matthias , Bläsing Jürgen , Dadgar Armin , Krost Alois
Published: February 2010

A 15 nm thick high temperature AlGaN nucleation layer was grown on a slightly off-orientedc-plane sapphire substrate by metal–organic vapor phase epitaxy. The evaluation of this layer by high resolution X-ray diffraction yields a nucleation with a threefold distribution of the rotational disorder within about 4° in the ω-scan at the in-plane AlGaN(1100) reflection, whereas the ω-scan at the symmetric AlGaN(0002) reflection exhibits a very narrow correlation peak. In addition, two weaker signals could be determined in the symmetric ω-scan. The positions of these minor maxima with respect to the correlation peak depend on the azimuth angle of the incident X-ray beam. Based on the determined off-orientation angle and lateral coherence lengths the phenomenon is explained in terms of a stepped sapphire surface morphology.