Search

Environmentally hazardous substances and exposure to these can cause various diseases. Volatile organic compounds can easily evaporate into the atmosphere, thereby exerting toxic effects through either the skin or respiratory tract exposures. Toluene, a neurotoxin, has been widely used in various industries. However, it has a detrimental effect on the nervous system (such as hallucinations or memory impairment), while data on the mechanism underlaying its harmful effects remain limited. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of toluene on the nervous system via epigenetic and genetic changes of toluene-exposed individuals. We identified significant epigenetic changes and confirmed that the affected abnormally expressed genes negatively influenced the nervous system. In particular, we confirmed that the miR-15 family, upregulated by toluene, downregulated ABL2, which could affect the R as signaling pathway resulting in neuronal structural abnormalities. Our study suggests that miR-15a-5p, miR-15b-5p, miR-16-5p, miR-301a-3p, and lncRNA NEAT1 may represent effective epigenomic markers associated with neurodegenerative diseases caused by toluene.

2D semiconductor-based ferroelectric field effect transistors (FeFETs) have been considered as a promising artificial synaptic device for implementation of neuromorphic computing systems. However, an inevitable problem, interface traps at the 2D semiconductor/ferroelectric oxide interface, suppresses ferroelectric characteristics, and causes a critical degradation on the performance of 2D-based FeFETs. Here, hysteresis modulation method using self-assembly monolayer (SAM) material for interface trap passivation on 2D-based FeFET is presented. Through effectively passivation of interface traps by SAM layer, the hysteresis of the proposed device changes from interface traps-dependent to polarization-dependent direction. The reduction of interface trap density is clearly confirmed through the result of calculation using the subthreshold swing of the device. Furthermore, excellent optic-neural synaptic characteristics are successfully implemeted, including linear and symmetric potentiation and depression, and multilevel conductance. This work identifies the potential of passivation effect for 2D-based FeFETs to accelerate the development of neuromorphic computing systems.

Patterned gallium oxide (Ga2O3) using one-step patterning followed by oxygen plasma treatment on a p-GaN layer can function as both current-blocking and optical-scattering regions for uniform current spreading and improved light-extraction efficiencies. The results showed that the optical output power of the LED with patterned Ga2O3 increased by 16.8% at 60 mA compared to that of conventional LEDs. Numerical studies on light tracing and emission pattern, and external quantum efficiency evaluation support the improvement of both uniform current spreading and light-extraction efficiencies by patterned Ga2O3.

Two printed circuit board embedded global positioning system antennas with a T-shape are presented in this article.Both antennas are loaded with three lumped elements and have the same antenna and ground size. Antenna 1 is used to a chip capacitor at the input port, whereas Antenna 2 is equipped with a chip inductor. The resonant frequency decreases with increasing capacitance for Antenna 1, whereas that of Antenna 2 does not change significantly with change in the inductance. Antenna 1 has a lower bandwidth and smaller gain than Antenna 2. Both antennas are investigated via simulations and experiments. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:576–580, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27350

This article presents compact global positioning system antennas loaded with a coupling strip and lumped elements for mobile phones. The first antenna proposed (Antenna 1) has a one chip capacitor, whereas the second (Antenna 2) uses both a one chip capacitor and an inductor. The size of Antenna 1 is 5 × 10 mm2, whereas Antenna 2 is 5 × 8 mm2. The radiation patterns are almost omni-directional and the measured peak gain is 0.5 dBi at 1575 MHz. Both antennas are designed and examined via simulation and experiment. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:363–366, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27317

In this letter, a printed planar inverted-F antenna is proposed for a quad-band operation.The proposed quasi-rectangular loop configuration yields the first and second resonant frequencies at 900 and 1800 MHz, respectively. The additional shorted strip on the bottom can expand the bandwidth at the upper band. The proposed antenna area is 8 × 38 mm2 and the ground size is 72 × 40 mm2. The measured impedance bandwidth, determined by 3:1 VSWR, has fully covered the GSM900 (880–960 MHz), DCS (1710–1880 MHz), PCS (1850–1990 MHz), and UMTS (1920–2170 MHz) frequency bands. The measured gain is higher than −1 dBi over the entire quad-band. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:2337–2341, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27099

Here, we describe the practical synthesis and biological properties of bergenin and its structural analogs. Synthetic bergenin compounds were prepared by acylation of bergenin. These compounds were then evaluated for suppression of lipopolysaccharide-induced nitric oxide (NO) generation in cultured cells and anti-narcotic effects on morphine-dependent mice. We found that bergenin derivatives showed potent anti-inflammatory activity (suppression of NO generation) at concentrations ranging from 20 to 30 μmin vitro, and bergenin derivatives (10-20 mg/kg) exhibited significant anti-narcotic effects on morphine dependence in mice. These results suggest the potential utility of bergenin and its analogs as anti-narcotic agents and the design of more potent anti-inflammatory compounds.

In this paper, we propose a new efficient bit-plane coding method for fine granular scalable (FGS) video coding. The general structure of the proposed bit-plane coding method is based on the traditional bit-plane coding scheme in MPEG-4 FGS. However, to enhance coding efficiency of bit-plane encoding, we apply an efficient probability estimation scheme through employing the binary arithmetic coding. For probability estimation, various context models are designed to take advantage of the characteristics of each bit-plane as well as the correlations of symbols among different bit-planes. Experimental results show that the proposed FGS coding scheme provides better coding performance, compared to the well-known FGS coding schemes in MPEG-4 FGS and JSVM. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 16, 113–120, 2006.

Transcriptional activation is associated commonly with recruitment of histone acetylases, while repression involves histone deacetylases (HDACs). Here, we provide evidence to suggest that STAT5 activates gene expression by recruiting HDAC. The interleukin-3 (IL-3)-dependent expression of the Id-1 gene, encoding a helix-loop-helix (HLH) transcriptional inhibitor, is activated by both C/EBPbeta and STAT5 transcription factors bound to its pro-B-cell enhancer (PBE), but is inhibited by HDAC inhibitors in Ba/F3 cells. STAT5 interacts with HDAC1 in the PBE region, resulting in deacetylation of histones, as well as C/EBPbeta, whose acetylation diminishes its DNA-binding activity. Consistently, expression of an acetylation-resistant mutant of C/EBPbeta results in IL-3-independent expression of the Id-1 gene. Thus, we propose a novel mechanism by which STAT5 mediates the deacetylation of C/EBPbeta, allowing transcriptional activation.

This letter presents a small printed PCB-embedded antenna for a mobile phone with GPS/GLONASS satellite navigation systems. The proposed antenna consists of a feeding strip, two coupling strips, and two chip capacitors. One end of each of the coupling strips is terminated with a chip capacitor and the other end is connected to the ground. The antenna measures 5 mm × 9 mm, and it is placed at the corner of the ground, which measures 40 mm × 70 mm. The bandwidth with a VSWR of 3:1 covers the GPS/GLONASS operation band. The radiation patterns are similar to those of a dipole antenna. The measured peak gain is 0.2 dBi at the GPS/GLONASS frequency. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:2736–2736, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27197

The authors report upon the increased light-output power (Pout) via a reduction in the forward voltage (Vf) for nonpolar a -plane GaN LEDs using Ni/Al/Ni/Au n-type ohmic contacts. The specific contact resistivity of the Ni/Al/Ni/Au contact is found to be as low as 5.6 × 10–5 whereas that of a typical Ti/Al/Ni/Au contact is 6.8 × 10–4 Ω cm2, after annealing at 700 °C. The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results show that the upward surface band bending is less pronounced for the Ni/Al contact compared to the Ti/Al contact, leading to a decrease in the effective Schottky barrier height (SBH). The Vf of the nonpolar LEDs decreases by 10% and Pout increases by 15% when the Ni/Al/Ni/Au scheme is used instead of the typical Ti/Al/Ni/Au metal scheme. (© 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

Thin-film transistors (TFTs) grown on a flexible glass substrate using single-crystal-like germanium (Ge) channel to simultaneously achieve high carrier mobility, high performance characteristics, mechanical flexibility, and cost-effective large-area manufacturing are reported. High-crystalline-quality materials of biaxially textured CeO2 deposited at room temperature by ion-beam-assisted deposition followed by single-crystal-like Ge epitaxially grown at 550 °C by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition on an amorphous substrate are developed. p-type Ge with {111} surface shows well-aligned grains in both out-of-plane and in-plane directions, as characterized by reflection high-energy electron diffraction, X-ray diffraction, and Raman spectroscopy. The material structures are fabricated to transistor devices with top-gate geometry. The devices (channel width and length = 80 and 14 μm) exhibit performance characteristics with on/off ratio of ≈106, a field-effect mobility of ≈105 cm2 V−1 s−1, and saturation current levels of ≈3.5 mA, which are significantly higher than performance metrics of other state-of-the-art TFTs based on amorphous Si, organic semiconductors, and semiconducting oxides. This development can open a new avenue for next-generation TFTs beyond the display applications.

In this paper, we have developed 8.0″ WVGA grade's automotive application with advanced fringe-field switching (conventional AFFS+) under wide temperature(−40∼105 °C). Besides, we have achieved high contrast ratio(> 1000:1), fast response time(≤ 25ms), excellent color characteristics and wide viewing angle. We propose new AFFS+ design for high image quality Display.