Effects of Hydrogen Plasma on the Electrical Properties of F-Doped ZnO Thin Films and p-i-n -Si:H Thin Film Solar Cells

1.5 wt% zinc fluoride (ZnF2) was mixed with zinc oxide powder to form the F-doped ZnO (FZO) composition. At first, the FZO thin films were deposited at room temperature and 5×10-3 Torr in pure Ar under different deposition power. Hall measurements of the as-deposited FZO thin films were investigated, and then the electrical properties were used to find the deposition power causing the FZO thin films with minimum resistance. The FZO thin films with minimum resistance were further treated by H2 plasma and then found their variations in the electrical properties by Hall measurements. Hydrochloric (HCl) acid solutions with different concentrations (0.1%, 0.2%, and 0.5%) were used to etch the surfaces of the FZO thin films. Finally, the as-deposited, HCl-etched as-deposited, and HCl-etched H2-plasma-treated FZO thin films were used as transparent electrodes to fabricate the p-i-n α-Si:H thin film solar cells and their characteristics were compared in this study. We would show that using H2-plasma-treated and HCl-etched FZO thin films as transparent electrodes would improve the efficiency of the fabricated thin film solar cells

Out-Of-Band Management on UEFI System Firmware

The modern Redfish is a specification that utilize RESTful interface semantics to access data defined in model format to perform out-of-band (OOB) management through specific OOB software or hardware (such as Baseboard Management Controller, BMC). The OOB management allow users to configure system remotely when the system is in either power-off or power-on state. Industry can expect there are more and more pre-boot firmware drivers (like UEFI drivers) and system peripherals (such as PCI devices, PCI add-on-card and so on) support Redfish Schema/Configuration data model in the near future. This article describes the method to abstract the data communication/synchronization between UEFI drivers and OOB management on UEFI firmware environment. Furthermore, this article is not only restricted to single OOB management on system, the abstracts method described in this article is flexible and extensible to support multiple OOB management instances on one system simultaneously. Not only Redfish OOB management data model is supported, this article fulfills the requirements of any other data model of OOB managements such as OData XML/JSON data model, CIM-XML data model, 3rd party data model and etc

A streamlined synthetic approach to the truncated linear trisaccharide fragment of QS-21

QS-21, a potent immunostimulatory saponin obtained from Quillaja saponaria Molina, a soapbark tree native to Chile, has undergone extensive study for its broad application as a vaccine adjuvant against various infectious diseases and cancers. The structure of QS-21, which features a linear oligosaccharide moiety, provides a critical attachment site for both the labile acyl side chain and the distinctive sugar unit that defines each major saponin variant. In this study, we present an efficient synthetic approach to the truncated linear trisaccharide fragment of QS-21, circumventing the challenges associated with the synthesis of the rare sugar D-fucose. The synthesis of this linear trisaccharide enables streamlined access to a homogeneous QS-21

Regioselective One-pot Protection and Protection-glycosylation of Carbohydrates

Deciphering the roles and structure–activity relationships of carbohydrates in biological processes requires access to sugar molecules of confirmed structure and high purity. Chemical synthesis is one of the best ways to obtain such access. However, the synthesis of carbohydrates has long been impeded by two major challenges – the regioselective protection of the polyol moiety of each monosaccharide building block and the stereoselective glycosylation to produce oligosaccharides of desired length. Here, we review the development of the first regioselective protection-glycosylation and a revolutionary regioselective combinatorial one-pot protection of monosaccharides that can be used to differentiate the various hydroxy groups of monosaccharides with a vast array of orthogonal protective groups in one-pot procedures

Adiponectin gene (ADIPOQ) polymorphisms correlate with the progression of nephropathy in Taiwanese male patients with type 2 diabetes

Aims: Polymorphisms of the ADIPOQ gene were associated with diabetic nephropathy (DN) in case-control studies predominantly among European populations. Gender may modify the ADIPOQ associated risk for DN. We investigated the association of 18 ADIPOQ polymorphisms with DN in a prospective Taiwanese cohort of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and explored whether gender plays a role in this genetic association. Methods: Selected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of ADIPOQ were genotyped in 566 T2D patients with normoalbuminuria at baseline. DN was defined based on urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (ACR). The Cox proportional hazard model was used to explore the association of individual SNP to DN events under different genetic models over a 6-year follow-up period. Analyses were further stratified by gender. Results: In male patients, the adjusted hazard ratios under the recessive models were 1.81 for rs2241766 TT (vs. GT+GG, 95% CI=1.10-2.96, p=0.019) and 1.89 for rs1063537 CC (vs. CT+TT, 95% CI=1.15-3.11, p=0.013). In the Kaplan-Meier survival curve, males carrying rs2241766 TT (vs. GT+GG, p=0.050) and rs1063537 CC (vs. CT+TT, p=0.037) recessive homozygotes also had a reduced nephropathy-free survival rate. SNPs rs2241767 and rs2082940, both in strong correlation with tag SNP rs1063537 (r≥0.96), were also associated with DN progression in males. In females, ADIPOQ polymorphisms were not associated with the progression of DN. Conclusions: ADIPOQ genetic polymorphisms rs2241766 (+45T>G), rs1063537, rs2241767 and rs2082940 were correlated with the progression of DN in Taiwanese male patients with T2D. The role of gender in this ADIPOQ genetic association needs to be further investigated in other populations

A Reinforcement Learning Approach for the Multichannel Rendezvous Problem

In this paper, we consider the multichannel rendezvous problem in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) where the probability that two users hopping on the same channel have a successful rendezvous is a function of channel states. The channel states are modelled by two-state Markov chains that have a good state and a bad state. These channel states are not observable by the users. For such a multichannel rendezvous problem, we are interested in finding the optimal policy to minimize the expected time-to-rendezvous (ETTR) among the class of {\em dynamic blind rendezvous policies}, i.e., at the $t^{th}$ time slot each user selects channel $i$ independently with probability $p_i(t)$, $i=1,2, \ldots, N$. By formulating such a multichannel rendezvous problem as an adversarial bandit problem, we propose using a reinforcement learning approach to learn the channel selection probabilities $p_i(t)$, $i=1,2, \ldots, N$. Our experimental results show that the reinforcement learning approach is very effective and yields comparable ETTRs when comparing to various approximation policies in the literature.Comment: 5 pages, 9 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1906.1042