Probing the Catalytic Activity of Reduced Graphene Oxide Decorated with Au Nanoparticles Triggered by Visible Light

Hybrid materials in which reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is decorated with Au nanoparticles (rGO–Au NPs) were obtained by the in situ reduction of GO and AuCl₄^?_(aq) by ascorbic acid. On laser excitation, rGO could be oxidized as a result of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) excitation in the Au NPs, which generates activated O₂ through the transfer of SPR‐excited hot electrons to O₂ molecules adsorbed from air. The SPR‐mediated catalytic oxidation of p‐aminothiophenol (PATP) to p,p′‐dimercaptoazobenzene (DMAB) was then employed as a model reaction to probe the effect of rGO as a support for Au NPs on their SPR‐mediated catalytic activities. The increased conversion of PATP to DMAB relative to individual Au NPs indicated that charge‐transfer processes from rGO to Au took place and contributed to improved SPR‐mediated activity. Since the transfer of electrons from Au to adsorbed O₂ molecules is the crucial step for PATP oxidation, in addition to the SPR‐excited hot electrons of Au NPs, the transfer of electrons from rGO to Au contributed to increasing the electron density of Au above the Fermi level and thus the Au‐to‐O₂ charge‐transfer process.     

Synthesis of lupeol derivatives and their antileishmanial and antitrypanosomal activities

The natural product lupeol 1 was isolated from aerial parts of Vernonia scorpioides with satisfactory yield, which made it viable to be used as starting material in semisynthetic approach. Ten lupeol derivatives 2–11 were prepared by classical procedures. Including, five new esters derivatives 7–11, which were obtained by structural modifications in the isopropylidene fragment. All semisynthetic compounds and lupeol 1–11 were confirmed by ¹H NMR, ¹³C NMR and HRMS. Their antiprotozoal activity was evaluated in vitro against L. amazonensis and T. cruzi. Derivative 6 showed the best antitrypanosomal activity (IC₅₀ = 12.48 μg/mL) and the lowest cytotoxic derivative (CC₅₀ = 161.50 μg/mL). The mechanism of action of the most active derivatives (4, 6 and 11) is not dependent from the enzyme trypanothione reductase.     

Adaptive viewpoints for co-browsing on heterogeneous devices

Co-browsing is an activity in which a group of users navigate their way through of a set of Web pages together for a shared purpose. Effective co-browsing among users with different device capabilities requires a shared understanding of those Web pages. This paper demonstrates the concept of shared viewpoints (SVPs), and personal viewpoints (PVPs), for co-browsing, before detailing a framework for implementing these concepts. Finally, the effectiveness of the framework is presented through a perceptual experiment.     

Performance study of iSCSI-based storage subsystems

iISCSI is emerging as an end-to-end protocol for transporting storage I/O block data over IP networks. By exploiting the ubiquitous Internet infrastructure, iSCSI greatly facilitates remote storage, remote backup, and data mirroring. This article evaluates the performance of two typical iSCSI storage subsystems by measuring and analyzing block-level I/O access performance and file-level access performance. In the file-level performance study, we compare file access performance in an NAS scheme with that in an iSCSI-based SAN scheme. Our test results show that Gigabit Ethernet-based iSCSI can reach very high bandwidth, close to that of a direct FC disk access in block I/O access. However, when the iSCSI traverses through longer distance, throughput relies heavily on the available bandwidth between the initiator and the target. On the other hand, the file-level performance shows that iSCSI-based file access (SAN scheme) provides higher performance than using NFS protocol in Linux and SMB protocol in Windows (NAS scheme). However, the advantage of using iSCSI-based file accesses decreases as the file size increases. The obtained experimental results shed some light on the performance of applications based on iSCSI storage.     

Popular biorthogonal wavelet filters via a lifting scheme and its application in image compression

A technique using a lifting scheme is presented for constructing compactly supported wavelets whose coefficients are composed of free variables locating in an interval. An efficient approach-based wavelet for image compression is developed by selecting the coefficients of the 9-7 wavelet filter and associated lifting scheme. Furthermore, the rationalised coefficients wavelet filter that can be implemented with simple integer arithmetic is achieved and its characteristic is close to the well known original irrational coefficients 9-7 wavelet filters developed by A. Cohen et al. (Commun. Pure Appl. Maths., vol.45, no.1, p.485-560, 1992). To reduce the computational cost of image coding applications further, an acceleration technique is proposed for the lifting steps. Software and hardware simulations show that the new method has very low complexity, and simultaneously preserves the high quality of the compressed image.     

Eye-safe compact scanning LIDAR technology

A 1.5-μm eye-safe, 3-D scanning, and compact Mie LIght Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is presented. The transmitter of the LIDAR is based on a KTA optical parameter oscillator (OPO) resonator. For detecting return signals, an InGaAs APD is used. The all solid-state OPO laser transmitter has the feature of small volume and lightweight, which allows a 165-lb compact eye-safe scanning LIDAR to be constructed. A system simulation using our own model was conducted to direct the system development. A method to solve the problem with small active area APD detectors was developed and described. The preliminary field-test measurement results indicated that the LIDAR has the capability to detect aerosols and clouds in lower atmospheres up to three dimensions.     

Handover and Uplink Power Control Performance in the 3.84 Mcps TDD mode of UTRA Network

In this article we consider the performance of the 3.84 Mcpstime-division duplex (TDD) mode of UTRA (Universal TerrestrialRadio Access) network. We emphasize two of the radio resourcemanagement algorithms, handover and uplink power control, whoserole in the overall system performance is studied extensively.First, a handover algorithm used in WCDMA (Wideband Code DivisionMultiple Access) standard is considered in a TDD-mode operation.This gives rise to a careful setting of different handoverparameters, and the evaluation of the effects to the systemperformance. Secondly, the specified uplink power controlalgorithm is considered. Since it is based on several user-mademeasurements which may involve both random and systematic errors acareful study about the suitability of the power control scheme iscarried out.     

A New Hand-Held Microsystem Architecture for Biological Analysis

This paper presents a hand-held microsystem based on new fully integrated magnetoresistive biochips for biomolecular recognition (DNA hybridization, antibody antigen interaction, etc.). Magnetoresistive chip surfaces are chemically treated, enabling the immobilization of probe biomolecules such as DNA or antibodies. Fluid handling is also integrated in the biochip. The proposed microsystem not only integrates the biochip, which is an array of 16times16 magnetoresistive sensors, but it also provides all the electronic circuitry for addressing and reading out each transducer. The proposed architecture and circuits were specifically designed for achieving a compact, programmable and portable microsystem. The microsystem also integrates a hand-held analyzer connected through a wireless channel. A prototype of the system was already developed and detection of magnetic nanoparticles was obtained. This indicates that the system may be used for magnetic label based bioassays     

An optically clocked transistor array with dual serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial conversion capability for optical label swapping

We propose an optically clocked transistor array optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) for both serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial conversion (demux/mux), enabling an interface between high-speed asynchronous burst optical labels and CMOS circuitry for optical label swapping. Dual functionality of the OEIC reduces size, power, and cost of the optical label swapper. The capability for greater than 20-Gb/s conversion operation is demonstrated.