Hyperlipidaemia is a major cause of atherosclerosis and related CVD and can be prevented with natural substances. Previously, we reported that a novel Bacillus-fermented green tea (FGT) exerts anti-obesity and hypolipidaemic effects. This study further investigated the hypotriglyceridaemic and anti-obesogenic effects of FGT and its underlying mechanisms. FGT effectively inhibited pancreatic lipase activity in vitro (IC50, 0·48 mg/ml) and ameliorated postprandial lipaemia in rats (26 % reduction with 500 mg/kg FGT). In hypertriglyceridaemic hamsters, FGT administration significantly reduced plasma TAG levels. In mice, FGT administration (500 mg/kg) for 2 weeks augmented energy expenditure by 22 % through the induction of plasma serotonin, a neurotransmitter that modulates energy expenditure and mRNA expressions of lipid metabolism genes in peripheral tissues. Analysis of the gut microbiota showed that FGT reduced the proportion of the phylum Firmicutes in hamsters, which could further contribute to its anti-obesity effects. Collectively, these data demonstrate that FGT decreases plasma TAG levels via multiple mechanisms including inhibition of pancreatic lipase, augmentation of energy expenditure, induction of serotonin secretion and alteration of gut microbiota. These results suggest that FGT may be a useful natural agent for preventing hypertriglyceridaemia and obesity.

Colloidal dispersion of nanocarbon (NC) materials in dilute solutions or pastes is prerequisite for applications of NC-based electrodes from flexible electronics and flexible conducting fibers to electrochemical devices. Here, we show a straightforward method for fabricating NC suspensions with >10% weight concentrations in absence of organic dispersants. The method involves introducing supramolecular quadruple hydrogen bonding motifs into the NC materials without sacrificing the electrical conductivity.

Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent boundary layers over isothermally heated walls were performed, and the effect of viscosity stratification on the turbulence statistics and skin friction were investigated. An empirical relation for temperature-dependent viscosity for water was adopted. Based on the free-stream temperature (30°C), two wall temperatures (70°C and 99°C) were selected. In the heated flows, the turbulence energy diminishes in the buffer layer, but increases near the wall. The reduction in turbulence kinetic energy in the buffer layer is accompanied by smaller levels of Reynolds shear stresses and, hence, weaker turbulence production. The enhanced turbulence energy near the wall is attributed to enhanced transfer of energy via additional diffusion-like terms due to the viscosity stratification. Despite the lower fluid viscosity near the wall, dissipation is also increased owing to the augmented near-wall fine-scale motion. Wall heating results in reduction in the skin-friction coefficient by up to 26 %. An evaluation of the different contributions to the skin friction demonstrates that drag reduction is primarily due to the changes in the Reynolds shear stresses across the boundary layer. Quadrant and octant analyses showed that ejections (Q2) and sweeps (Q4) are significantly reduced, a result further supported by an examination of outer vortical structures from linear stochastic estimation of the ejection events and spanwise vortices.

Semiconductors or metal nanoparticles (NPs) using their monolayer bindings with self-assembly chemicals are an attractive topic for device researchers. Electrical performance of such structures can be investigated for a particular application, such as memory device. Currently, Au NPs has been reported to show a substantial potential in the memory applications. In this study, Au NP and gluing layer were fabricated through a new method of monolayer formation of a chemical bonding or gluing. In this study, a new NPs memory system was fabricated by using organic semiconductor, i.e., pentacene as the active layer, evaporated Au as electrode, SiO2 as the gate insulator layer on silicon wafer. In addition, Au NPs coated with binding chemicals were used as charge storage elements on an APTES (3-amino-propyltriethoxysilane) as a gluing layer. In order to investigate chemical binding of Au NP to the gate insulator layer, GPTMS (3-glycidoxy-propyltrimethoxysilane) were coated on the Au NPs. As a result of that, a layer of gold nanoparticles has been incorporated into a metal-pentacene-insulator-semiconductor (MPIS) structure. The MPIS device with the Au NP exhibited a hysteresis in its capacitance versus voltage analysis. Charge storage in the layer of nanoparticles is thought to be responsible for this effect.

We report the binding and conductivity characteristics of PbSe nanocrystal quantum dots which have different ligands on the surface. The PbSe nanocrystal quantum dots were surface functionalized using chemical treatment. The results of post-treatment analysis show that the PbSe surface can be successfully functionalized with various ligands based on thiol- and amine-molecules (e.g., oleic acid, dodecanethiol and butylamine). Conductivity measurements performed using a metal-semiconductor-metal structure indicate that there is an increase of conductivity as the length of the ligand connecting the quantum dots is reduced.

Recently, organic nonvolatile memory of nonvolatile memories have attracted attention because application as next generation memory devices. In effort for realizing low-molecular organic nonvolatile memory, the dependence of organic thickness on electrical characteristic behavior in low-molecular organic nonvolatile memory was investigated. We developed an low-molecular organic nonvolatile memory fabricated with the device structure of Al/Alq3 (Aluminum tris(8-hydroxyquinoline))/Ni nanocrystals/Alq3/Al. Four different organic thicknesses, i.e., 30, 40, 50, and 100 nm, with fixing middle layer thickness were deposited by using a high vacuum thermal deposition method. The reason we chose Ni for middle metal layer is that Ni has smaller grain boundary which is benefit for scaling down and larger work function (∼5.15 eV) that can make a deep quantum well in energy band diagram, compared with those of Al. We confirmed that, as an organic thickness increases, a current level linearly decreases by an order of magnitude in a log-scale except for the 100 nm sample case. That is, Ion of 30-nm-thick sample was about 1 mA and 50-nm-thick sample was about 10 ¥ìA. The reason why the decrease in the current with increasing an organic thickness can be attributed to that electron transfer occurs less frequently because of the decrease in the hopping frequency. In addition, a 100-nm-thick sample was not shown the electrical characteristic of low-molecular organic nonvolatile memory. Meanwhile, the switching characteristics of our device showed that Vth of 2V, Vp(program) of 4V, Ve(erase) of 7V, and Ion (after programming)/Ioff (after erasing) of ~6x103. In addition, the interesting behavior of those characteristics is that the switching voltages (e.g; Vth, Vp, Ve Ion/Ioff) were not much changed with a varying an organic thickness. Therefore, we can conclude that an organic thickness does not affect significantly to the switching characteristics but current level. In addition, it was confirmed that a 30-nm-thick organic thickness was the best process condition in realizing low-molecular organic nonvolatile memory fabrication process.

Electro-muscular disruption (EMD) devices such as TASER M26 and X26 have been used as a less-than-lethal weapon. Such EMD devices shoot a pair of darts toward an intended target to generate an incapacitating electrical shock. In the use of the EMD device, there have been controversial questions about its safety and effectiveness. To address these questions, we need to investigate the distribution of the current density J inside the target produced by the EMD device. One approach is to develop a computational model providing a quantitative and reliable analysis about the distribution of J. In this paper, we set up a mathematical model of a typical EMD shock, bearing in mind that we are aiming to compute the current density distribution inside the human body with a pair of inserted darts. The safety issue of TASER is directly related to the magnitude of |J| at the region of the darts where the current density J is highly concentrated. Hence, fine computation of J near the dart is essential. For such numerical simulations, serious computational difficulties are encountered in dealing with the darts having two different very sharp corners, tip of needle and tip of barb. The boundary of a small fishhook-shaped dart inside a large computational domain and the presence of corner singularities require a very fine mesh leading to a formidable amount of numerical computations. To circumvent these difficulties, we developed a multiple point source method of computing J. It has a potential to provide effective analysis and more accurate estimate of J near fishhook-shaped darts. Numerical experiments show that the MPSM is just fit for the study of EMD shocks.

This paper reports the fabrication of and characterization on EWOD(electrowetting-on-dielectric) devices on flexible substrates of interest to the flexible displays and devices. The EWOD devices were fabricated on PET (poly ethylene terephthalate) and PMMA (polymethylmethacrylate) substrates. Au and ITO(indium tin oxide) were used as electrode materials. The wet etching process was developed not to attack plastic flexible substrates. The photo resist was used as an insulator materials in EWOD devices due to the deformation of substrate when oxide layer was deposited on plastic substrate. As a hydrophobic layer, cytop was spin-coated on the photo resist. Wetting tests were done with DI water in air environment. In sessile droplet test, the contact angle of droplet changed from 116◦ to 80◦ under DC power. Threshold voltage was 20 Vdc. The droplet was oscillated under AC power because of the frequency. But the contact angle of droplet was began to change at 30Vac and decrease with the increase of AC power. In droplet transporting test, a droplet(0.2§¡) was started transporting at 20Vac and the transporting speed increased with the increase of AC power. But the droplet transporting was not occurred under DC power because of slower contact angle recovery rate under DC power.

In this investigation, 22 cloned male piglets were obtained by male fetal fibroblast-cell-derived nuclear transfer. Eighteen of the cloned animals died. The two cell lines did not differ significantly with regard to efficiency of live piglet production. The gross anatomy of the testes of male piglets that died was normal. However, one piglet displayed Leydig cell hypoplasia (LCH). No anatomical defects were detected in the testes of other cloned male piglets. TUNEL analysis of the testis with LCH revealed significant apoptosis in the Leydig cells, while apoptosis was rarely detected in Sertoli cells and spermatogonia. In contrast, testes from the remaining 17 piglets that died appeared normal in size, and their Sertoli and Leydig cell numbers were comparable to those in control piglet testes. Although cloned piglets were derived from fibroblasts obtained from the same fetus, phenotypic instability between cells used for the production of somatic cell cloned piglets suggests that abnormalities in male cloned piglets are caused not by technical problems and/or reprogramming effects, but rather by epigenetically and/or genetically damaged cell-specific effects.

Conventional Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) was modified by adding up a small amount of SiOx, using co-sputtering technique from multiple targets. The SiOx content was gradually increased by increasing the power applied to SiOx target, up to 8 volume percent. The sheet resistance of SiOx-containing GST exponentially increased, when the room-temperature-deposited samples were annealed at 300 °C. Transmission electron microscopy images revealed that no SiOx particulates were formed, which was confirmed by Gattan image filtering. It was indicated by x-ray diffraction patterns that the grain size of SiOx-containing GST is smaller than normal GST with lattice locally distorted at its crystalline state, suggesting that molecular SiOx is homogeneously distributed throughout the GST matrix. We observed that the crystallization temperature of SiOx-containing GST is gradually elevated by increasing the SiOx content, while the melting point decreased. These observations led to the reset current reduction, which is a critical requirement for the high density PRAM.

In this work, electrospinning was carried out using 12 wt.% poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) solution under fixed tip-to-collect distance (10 cm) and voltage (15 kV) in order to fabricate nanofibers-reinforced composites. The content of PEO nanofibers was varied from 0 to 10 wt.% in the epoxy (EP) matrix resins. And the PEO powders-impregnated composites were also prepared to compare with physicochemecal properties of nanofibers-reinforced composites. Thermal and mechanical interfacial properties of EP/PEO nanocomposites were characterized by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and fracture toughness test, respectively. As a result, the PEO-based nanofibers-reinforced composites showed an improvement of thermal stability parameters (initial decomposed temperature (IDT) and integral procedural decomposition temperature (IPDT)) and fracture toughness factors (KIC and GIC), compared to the composites impregnated with PEO powders. And the thermal and mechanical interfacial properties of the composites were increased with increasing the PEO content, which could be probably attributed to the higher specific surface area and larger aspect ratio of PEO nanofibers, resulting in improving the demand performance of the nanocomposites.

The electrical characteristics of SiH4-based PECVD gate oxide have been investigated with respect to gate oxide integrity (GOI) and its reliability. It was found that the GOI of poly-Si TFT integrated on glass substrate strongly depended on the charge trapping and deep level interface states generation under Fowler-Nordheim stress (FNS). By applying elevated temperature postanneal without vacuum break after the gate oxide deposition, highly reliable gate oxide was obtained. Under FNS, ID-VG curve showed severe shift and degradation of subthreshold slope, which were reduced by adopting post-annealed gate oxide. Besides, the TFT with post-annealed gate oxide showed around 10 times higher charge to breakdown than that of as-deposited gate oxide. Charge to breakdown of MOS capacitors were also studied. By applying post-annealed gate oxide, charge to breakdown drastically improved, which could be explained by reduced charge trapping under FNS.