602 research outputs found
Physical-based Analytical Model of Flexible a-IGZO TFTs Accounting for Both Charge Injection and Transport
No full textHere we show a new physical-based analytical model of a-IGZO TFTs. TFTs scaling from L=200 μm to L=15 μm and fabricated on plastic foil are accurately reproduced with a unique set of parameters. The model is used to design a zero-VGS inverter. It is a valuable tool for circuit design and technology characterization
Analogue Frontend Amplifiers for Bio-Potential Measurements Manufactured With a-IGZO TFTs on Flexible Substrate
No full textThree novel differential amplifier topologies using double gate a-IGZO TFTs on flexible substrate are presented in this paper. The designs exploit positive feedback and a load with self-biased top gate to achieve the highest static gain in single stage a-IGZO amplifiers reported to date. After fabrication, the three amplifiers exhibit respectively a static gain of 14 dB, 21.5 dB and 30 dB, with a bandwidth of 2 kHz, 400 Hz, and 150 Hz. Also, for each circuit the input referred noise has been measured to be 420 μVrms, 195 μVrms and 146 μVrms, respectively. Based on these results, the a-IGZO amplifier providing the highest gain is suitable as front-end for heart rate measurements and, with some further optimization verified in simulation, can also be used for other bio-potential applications, like electro hysterogram and electro cardiogram
Unified physical DC model of staggered amorphous InGaZnO transistors
No full textIn this paper, we propose a unified physical model of InGaZnO [amorphous indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (a-IGZO)] thin-film transistors (TFTs) accounting for both charge injection at the contact and charge transport within the channel. We extract the current-voltage characteristics of the injecting contact from the measurements of a-IGZO TFTs fabricated on plastic foil. We show that the charge injection depends on both the drain and the gate voltages. We model the charge injection in staggered a-IGZO TFTs basing on the thermionic emission-diffusion theory including the charge carrier-dependent electron velocity due to the trap states in the subgap of the a-IGZO semiconductor. Combining the charge injection model with a charge transport model, we accurately and consistently describe the measurements of staggered a-IGZO TFTs with channel-length scaling from 200 μm to 15 μm. The proposed unified model is implemented in a circuit simulator and used to design unipolar inverters. The good agreement between simulations and measurements of the inverters further confirms the effectiveness of the proposed approach
Compact physical model of a-IGZO TFTs for circuit simulation
No full textAmorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) is a candidate material for thin-film transistors (TFTs) owing to its large electron mobility. The development of high functionality circuits requires accurate and efficient circuit simulation that, in turn, is based on compact physical a-IGZO TFTs models. Here we propose a compact physical-based and analytical model of the drain current of a-IGZO TFTs. The model accounts for both trapped and free charges by means of an effective density of states that accurately approximate the actual a-IGZO density of states in the energy range relevant for the TFT operation. The model is implemented in a circuit simulator and it is validated with the measurements of both coplanar and staggered a-IGZO TFTs fabricated on flexible substrates
Aspects determining the risk of pesticides to wild bees: risk profiles for focal crops on three continents
No full textAutomated detection and control of volunteer potato plants
No full textHigh amounts of manual labor are needed to control volunteer potato plants in arable fields. Due to the high costs, this leads to incomplete control of these weed plants, and they spread diseases like Phytophthora infestans to other fields. This results in higher environmental loads by curative spraying of crop protection chemicals, which is in contradiction to the required decreased use of crop protection chemicals to save the environment. Therefore, the main objective of this thesis was “to develop a system for automated detection and control of volunteer potato plants”. A systematic design approach was used to define a program of requirements and to identify and order possible solutions to accomplish the detection and control. The main requirements were a travel speed of up to 2 m s-1, resolution of control at least 10×10 mm, work under variable natural light conditions, control of volunteer plants > 95%, and undesired control of sugar beet plants - Detection of volunteer potato plants, - Control of volunteer potato plants, - Real-time implementation of integrated detection and control on a proof of principle machine. For the purpose of detection of volunteer potato plants, the narrow band spectral reflectance properties of volunteer potato plants and sugar beet plants were analyzed. Narrow band spectral measurements were done in 2006 and 2007 on two different fields. This resulted in 15 datasets on clay and sand soil. Discriminating wavebands were selected and classified with neural networks and statistical discriminant analysis. A neural network with two hidden neurons performed best for classification. Two sensors were used covering the range from 450 to 900 nm and from 900 to 1650 nm. Both visible and near infra-red wavebands were responsible for discrimination. From the analysis 450, 765, and 855 nm from sensor 1 and 900, 1440, and 1530 nm from sensor 2 were identified as important discriminative wavebands. However, the discriminative wavelengths depended on field and crop status and could not be generalized. Ten wavebands that were optimally adapted to the datasets gave 99% true negative classification of volunteer potato plants. On the other hand, a fixed set of three wavebands that was not adapted to the individual datasets gave 80% true negative classification of volunteer potato plants. This indicates that adaptive feature sets are required for classification. The development of the machine vision detection system started with measurements in 2005. Color based detection showed that the difference in classification results was larger between fields than the difference between a static neural network and static Bayesian classification. Then, machine vision measurements in 2006 with a color camera under changing and constant natural light conditions showed that crop and weed properties change within a field. An adaptive instead of static classification increased classification accuracy from 34.9% to 67.7% under changing light conditions. Under constant natural light conditions, the classification accuracy increased from 84.6% to 89.8%. So, adaptive classifiers are required and were implemented in the further research as these gave significantly higher classification results. As a next step, besides a color camera also a near-infrared camera was used for imaging within the proof of principle machine, as this gave a better feature set for classification. Additionally, the field of view of the cameras was shielded and artificial light was used to maintain constant light conditions. For the real-time implementation, an unsupervised adaptive Bayesian classifier was used. The crop row position and crop row width were determined and a Kalman filter improved tracking of the rows, to adapt to the varying properties of the crop in the field. Data from between the crop rows was trained as the volunteer potato class and data from within the crop row was trained as the sugar beet class. This resulted in good quality training data for the Bayes classifier. The system was unsupervised, as it learned and trained itself based on row recognition. The features that were used for training and classification were: blue, hue, saturation, excessive green, red minus blue, near-infrared and near-infrared difference vegetation index (NDVI). These feature values within the training data were continuously locally adapted, in two first-in-first-out buffers both with an area of 500 cm2 for sugar beet and volunteer potato plants. Measurements were done on seven days in 2007 and 2008. The results showed a trade-off between the percentage of correct classified volunteer potato plants and the percentage of misclassification of sugar beet plants. In one of the fields 96.6% volunteer potato classification and 8.0% sugar beet misclassification was achieved. Connected to the detection system was a micro-sprayer that applied glyphosate in gel to the volunteer potato plants. Spraying gel through a micro-sprayer was innovative. This proved to work in the application of glyphosate on plants. As knowledge of the dose response of glyphosate on potato was outdated and could not be used for plant specific application, a dose-response study was done with flat fan nozzles on 120 potato plants to determine the efficacy of glyphosate. The effect parameters tuber weight and photosynthesis activity were analyzed with log-logistic nonlinear regression methods. This resulted in an amount of 843 μg a.e. per plant for reduction of tuber weight and photosynthesis with 90%. This amount was applied on plants with a height of 6.1±1.39 cm and an area of 53.3±19.6 cm2. As glyphosate was to be applied with a micro-sprayer, the dose-response study was extended to 500 greenhouse grown potato plants. Five application methods were used: 1) flat fan water application, 2) flat fan gel application, 3) micro-sprayer low density distribution, 4) micro-sprayer medium density distribution, and 5) micro-sprayer high density distribution. As effect parameters again tuber weight, photosynthesis activity, and in addition shoot dry weight were used. They were analyzed with ANOVAs and box-plots. The micro-sprayer dense distribution with 3022 droplets m-2 and 3.3 mg per droplet had the best efficacy. The micro-sprayer controlled the volunteer potato plants with less glyphosate compared to flat fan nozzles. Furthermore, it had a centimeter precision resolution and low risks of unwanted crop damage. With real-time hardware, machine vision detection and micro-sprayer were integrated to a proof of principle machine. A travel speed of 0.8 m s-1 was reached with the proof of principle machine and it had an approximated capacity of 2.5 hrs ha-1. This was the maximum that could be realized as the micro-sprayer valve actuation frequency was maximally 80 Hz. The image processing time for one image of 0.2 m length was 195 ms. At this travel speed automated feedback systems on the operation of the system are required to support and replace human surveillance. Therefore, the Fréchet distance measure between multivariate distributions was introduced as quality indicator of classification performance. The Fréchet distance measure was significantly smaller when the classification performance was low, as identified on ground truth determined classification results afterwards. This proves that the performance could be predicted with a distance measure between multivariate distributions. In case of poor predicted classification performance, the application of glyphosate with the micro-sprayer can be halted to prevent unwanted crop damage and economic losses. The accuracy of application was ±1.4 cm in longitudinal direction and ±0.75 cm in transversal direction. During a field trial, up to 84% of the volunteer plants were controlled with 1.4% unwanted controlled sugar beet plants. To sum up, within this research a proof of principle machine for automated detection and control of volunteer potato plants in sugar beet fields has successfully been developed. The system performed closely to the requirements that were set in the start-up of the project. The percentage of 95% controlled volunteer potato plants can be reached. On the other hand, the travel speed still has to be increased from 0.8 m s-1 to 2.0 m s-1. The system is an example of new technology that can be developed for practical applications to reduce the amount of required labor and to reduce the crop protection inputs for weed control in arable farming. <br/
Effects of hypodontia on craniofacial structures and mandibular growth pattern
No full textIntroduction: This study was performed to examine craniofacial structures in persons with hypodontia and to reveal any differences, that may occur, when agenetic teeth are only found in the maxilla, the mandible or in both jaws. The groups consistent of 50 children (33 girls, 17 boys) aged between 9 and 13.5 years were analyzed and assigned to three subgroups. Group 1 = upper jaw hypodontia. Group 2 = lower jaw hypodontia. Group 3 = hypodontia in both jaws. Materials and methods: Eleven angular and three index measurements from lateral encephalographs and two linear measurements from dental blaster casts were calculated. All data was statistically analyzed, parameters with p < 5% were investigated for each subgroup respectively. Results: In comparison with standards the study group showed bimaxillary retrognathism and a reduction of the lower anterior facial height. Moreover both overbite and overjet significantly increased. Other values laid within the normal ranges. Evaluating results of the subgroups, differences in the means of SNA, SNB and overjet between the groups were observed. Analysis of the mandibular growth pattern revealed, that neither vertical nor horizontal patterns are dominant in hypodontia patients. Conclusions: In certain dentofacial parameters differences between persons with hypodontia and such with full dentition exist. According to our findings agenetic teeth may have a negative influence on the saggital development of a jaw and the lower face and may be responsible for increased overbites. This should receive attention in orthodontic treatment of hypodontia patients
Distinct migratory and non-migratory ecotypes of an endemic New Zealand eleotrid (Gobiomorphus cotidianus) – implications for incipient speciation in island freshwater fish species
No full textBackground: Many postglacial lakes contain fish species with distinct ecomorphs. Similar evolutionary scenarios might be acting on evolutionarily young fish communities in lakes of remote islands. One process that drives diversification in island freshwater fish species is the colonization of depauperate freshwater environments by diadromous (migratory) taxa, which secondarily lose their migratory behaviour. The loss of migration limits dispersal and gene flow between distant populations, and, therefore, is expected to facilitate local morphological and genetic differentiation. To date, most studies have focused on interspecific relationships among migratory species and their non-migratory sister taxa. We hypothesize that the loss of migration facilitates intraspecific morphological, behavioural, and genetic differentiation between migratory and non-migratory populations of facultatively diadromous taxa, and, hence, incipient speciation of island freshwater fish species.
Results: Microchemical analyses of otolith isotopes (Sr-88, Ba-137 and Ca-43) differentiated migratory and non-migratory stocks of the New Zealand endemic Gobiomorphus cotidianus McDowall (Eleotridae). Samples were taken from two rivers, one lake and two geographically-separated outgroup locations. Meristic analyses of oculoscapular lateral line canals documented a gradual reduction of these structures in the non-migratory populations. Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) fingerprints revealed considerable genetic isolation between migratory and non-migratory populations. Temporal differences in reproductive timing (migratory = winter spawners, non-migratory = summer spawners; as inferred from gonadosomatic indices) provide a prezygotic reproductive isolation mechanism between the two ecotypes.
Conclusion: This study provides a holistic look at the role of diadromy in incipient speciation of island freshwater fish species. All four analytical approaches (otolith microchemistry, morphology, spawning timing, population genetics) yield congruent results, and provide clear and independent evidence for the existence of distinct migratory and non-migratory ecotypes within a river in a geographically confined range. The morphological changes within the non-migratory populations parallel interspecific patterns observed in all non-migratory New Zealand endemic Gobiomorphus species and other derived gobiid taxa, a pattern suggesting parallel evolution. This study indicates, for the first time, that distinct ecotypes of island freshwater fish species may be formed as a consequence of loss of migration and subsequent diversification. Therefore, if reproductive isolation persists, these processes may provide a mechanism to facilitate speciation
Impact of fatty acid status on immune function of children in low-income countries.
No full textIn vitro and animal studies point to numerous mechanisms by which fatty acids, especially long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA), can modulate the innate and adaptive arms of the immune system. These data strongly suggest that improving the fatty acid supply of young children in low-income countries might have immune benefits. Unfortunately, there have been virtually no studies of fatty acid/immune interactions in such settings. Clinical trial registers list over 150 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) involving PUFAs, only one in a low-income setting (the Gambia). We summarize those results here. There was evidence for improved growth and nutritional status, but the primary end point of chronic environmental enteropathy showed no benefit, possibly because the infants were still substantially breastfed. In high-income settings, there have been RCTs with fatty acids (usually LCPUFAs) in relation to 18 disease end points, for some of which there have been numerous trials (asthma, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis). For these diseases, the evidence is judged reasonable for risk reduction for childhood asthma (but not in adults), as yielding possible benefit in Crohn's disease (insufficient evidence in ulcerative colitis) and for convincing evidence for rheumatoid arthritis at sufficient dose levels, though formal meta-analyses are not yet available. This analysis suggests that fatty acid interventions could yield immune benefits in children in poor settings, especially in non-breastfed children and in relation to inflammatory conditions such as persistent enteropathy. Benefits might include improved responses to enteric vaccines, which frequently perform poorly in low-income settings, and these questions merit randomized trials
Metaphorical bridge-building for promoting understanding and peaceful coexistence
No full textAfter briefly sketching the tumultuous nature of life in modern societies, the author calls on the reader to imagine for him- or herself the construction of a metaphorical traffic intersection that would enable those who make use of it to ‘fly over’ all the mayhem and disturbances. The proposed ‘flyover’ consists of three sub-structures or ‘bridges’, namely social capital, spirituality and education. A discussion of each of these sub-structures is followed by a discussion of the combination of all three in a virtual flyover that could contribute to a world characterised by greater understanding, respect, tolerance and peaceful coexistence
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