In a recent survey of nematodes associated with tobacco in Shandong, China, the root-lesion nematode Pratylenchus coffeae was identified using a combination of morphology and molecular techniques. This nematode species is a serious parasite that damages a variety of plant species. The model plant benthi, Nicotiana benthamiana, is frequently used to study plant-disease interactions. However, it is not known whether this plant species is a host of P. coffeae. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the parasitism and pathogenicity of five populations of the root-lesion nematode P. coffeae on N. benthamiana. N. benthamiana seedlings with the same growth status were chosen and inoculated with 1,000 nematodes per pot. At 60 days after inoculation, the reproductive factors (Rf = final population densities (Pf)/initial population densities (Pi)) for P. coffeae in the rhizosphere of N. benthamiana were all more than 1, suggesting that N. benthamiana was a good host plant for P. coffeae. Nicotiana. benthamiana infected by P. coffeae showed weak growth, decreased tillering, high root reduction, and noticeable brown spots on the roots. Thus, we determined that the model plant N. benthamiana can be used to study plant-P. coffeae interactions.

Prenatal glucocorticoid overexposure has been shown to programme adult cardiovascular function in a range of species, but much less is known about the long-term effects of neonatal glucocorticoid overexposure. In horses, prenatal maturation of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis and the normal prepartum surge in fetal cortisol occur late in gestation compared to other precocious species. Cortisol levels continue to rise in the hours after birth of full-term foals and increase further in the subsequent days in premature, dysmature and maladapted foals. Thus, this study examined the adult cardiovascular consequences of neonatal cortisol overexposure induced by adrenocorticotropic hormone administration to full-term male and female pony foals. After catheterisation at 2–3 years of age, basal arterial blood pressures (BP) and heart rate were measured together with the responses to phenylephrine (PE) and sodium nitroprusside (SNP). These data were used to assess cardiac baroreflex sensitivity. Neonatal cortisol overexposure reduced both the pressor and bradycardic responses to PE in the young adult males, but not females. It also enhanced the initial hypotensive response to SNP, slowed recovery of BP after infusion and reduced the gain of the cardiac baroreflex in the females, but not males. Basal diastolic pressure and cardiac baroreflex sensitivity also differed with sex, irrespective of neonatal treatment. The results show that there is a window of susceptibility for glucocorticoid programming during the immediate neonatal period that alters cardiovascular function in young adult horses in a sex-linked manner.

This study aimed to comprehensively evaluate factors that influence the likelihood of syphilis infection from risk-taking behaviours and medical conditions. A retrospective case-control study was conducted by enrolling 664 syphilis inpatients (excluding 11 congenital syphilis patients) and 800 sex- and age-matched controls. Medical histories, clinical data and patient interview data were collected and subjected to logistic regression analyses. The prevalence of syphilis in the study population was 3·9% (675/17 304). By univariate analysis, syphilis infection was associated with migration between cities, marital status, smoking, reproductive history, hypertension, elevated blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) (P < 0·05). A high rate of syphilis-HBV co-infection was observed in HIV-negative patients and further research revealed an association between syphilis and specific HBV serological reactivity. Syphilis was also associated with the frequency, duration and status of tobacco use. Multivariate analysis indicated that syphilis infection was independently associated with migration between cities [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1·368, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1·048–1·785], current smoking (aOR 1·607, 95% CI 1·177–2·195), elevated BUN (aOR 1·782, 95% CI 1·188–2·673) and some serological patterns of HBV infection. To prevent the spread of infectious diseases, inpatients and blood donors should be tested for HIV, syphilis, HBV and HCV simultaneously.

We present a simultaneous photoemission spectroscopic, low-energy electron diffraction and low-energy electron microscopic study of the metal-insulator transition of strained VO2. The fraction of rutile structure is extracted from the microscopic measurements throughout the transition, and compared with the fraction of the metallic electrons from photoemission data. We find that at intermediate temperatures, while the system is predominantly monoclinic-like in structure, the electronic component of the transition is much further advanced. Our results provide direct evidence for a monoclinic-like metallic phase of VO2 that is easily accessible at ambient temperatures and pressures.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2013 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, August 4 – August 8, 2013.

The IntCal09 and Marine09 radiocarbon calibration curves have been revised utilizing newly available and updated data sets from 14C measurements on tree rings, plant macrofossils, speleothems, corals, and foraminifera. The calibration curves were derived from the data using the random walk model (RWM) used to generate IntCal09 and Marine09, which has been revised to account for additional uncertainties and error structures. The new curves were ratified at the 21st International Radiocarbon conference in July 2012 and are available as Supplemental Material at www.radiocarbon.org. The database can be accessed at http://intcal.qub.ac.uk/intcal13/.

Over the past decade, the PV industry has witnessed tremendous growth in manufacturing scale and technology advancement, with PV generated electricity cost ever approaching grid parity. Among them, Si based thin film technology has made substantial progress in demonstrating its inherent advantages in lower material cost, ease of manufacturing and higher energy yield, etc. More recently, reduced product prices and competing technologies from crystalline silicon and other thin film technologies have made amorphous and microcrystalline silicon based thin film technology very challenging, and requires further increase in module efficiency and decrease in manufacturing cost. As one of the few companies in the world with significant manufacturing capacity for tandem thin film Si PV products, Chint Solar (Astronergy) has been at the forefront of technology development for the mass production of large-scale (Gen. 5, 1.43m2) Si thin film solar modules in the last 5 years. We will review major technology advancements which have been mass production proven and led to the mass produced tandem silicon thin film module with 10.0% plus stabilized efficiency, along with the field performance of those modules.

Information Extraction (IE) systems assist analysts to assimilate information from electronic documents. This paper focuses on IE tasks designed to support information discovery applications. Since information discovery implies examining large volumes of heterogeneous documents for situations that cannot be anticipated a priori, they require IE systems to have breadth as well as depth. This implies the need for a domain-independent IE system that can easily be customized for specific domains: end users must be given tools to customize the system on their own. It also implies the need for defining new intermediate level IE tasks that are richer than the subject-verb-object (SVO) triples produced by shallow systems, yet not as complex as the domain-specific scenarios defined by the Message Understanding Conference (MUC). This paper describes InfoXtract, a robust, scalable, intermediate-level IE engine that can be ported to various domains. It describes new IE tasks such as synthesis of entity profiles, and extraction of concept-based general events which represent realistic near-term goals focused on deriving useful, actionable information. Entity profiles consolidate information about a person/organization/location etc. within a document and across documents into a single template; this takes into account aliases and anaphoric references as well as key relationships and events pertaining to that entity. Concept-based events attempt to normalize information such as time expressions (e.g., yesterday) as well as ambiguous location references (e.g., Buffalo). These new tasks facilitate the correlation of output from an IE engine with structured data to enable text mining. InfoXtract's hybrid architecture comprised of grammatical processing and machine learning is described in detail. Benchmarking results for the core engine and applications utilizing the engine are presented.

A family of new chiral metallocycles based on Pt(II) diimine metallocornors and bis(acetylene) bridging ligands have been synthesized, and characterized by a variety of techniques including 1H and 13C NMR, UV-visible, luminescence, infrared, and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopies, and mass spectrometry. All metallocycles exhibit very strong phosphorescence with quantum yields of 8.3 to 15.7%. Chiral Pt(II)-based molecular squares were used as the light-emitting layer in multiplayer devices, and a maximum brightness of 5470 cd/m2 with a maximum luminous efficiency of 0.93 cd/A was achieved.

Porous SiLK resin is an ultra-low-k interlayer dielectric (ILD) material designed to meet the needs of the 65 nm technology node and beyond. In early 2002, the porous SiLK resin formulation was defined and scaled up, facilitating the tight monitoring and control of key properties, including pore size distribution, over several lots of material. The film processing kinetics are now well understood and a wide process window exists which ensures optimum pore morphology and pore size distribution. Thermal cycling of films demonstrates no effect on pore morphology or dielectric constant. The material has been designed to minimize the impact of CTE mismatch at high temperature, which challenged the integration of some previous generations of SiLK and porous SiLK dielectric resins. The discrete, closed-cell pore geometry is well characterized and enables the extendibility of process module development from SiLK resin technology to porous SiLK resin. Concurrent with the scale up efforts, advancements in minimizing both cure time and temperature simultaneously, as well as significant improvements in pore size and pore size distribution, have been achieved. The cure and porogen burn out time has been reduced by 50% or greater, and the temperature has been reduced to 370°C. The pore size has been reduced by ∼35%, and the pore size distribution has been narrowed by ∼40%. These advancements have resulted in the introduction of porous SiLK T resin, with a dielectric constant of k = 2.4 and a recommended cure temperature of 370°C, and the introduction of porous SiLK U resin, with a mean pore diameter of ∼5 nm and a dielectric constant of k = 2.2.

We investigated ferroelectric properties of 20nm-thick epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) ultrathin films prepared on SrRuO3 (SRO)/SrTiO3 (STO) by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). When SRO with terrace ledges was used as a bottom electrode, 20nm-thick PZT ultrathin films with ferroelectricity were successfully obtained. These PZT films exhibited saturated hysteresis loops with remanent polarizations (Pr) of 29–33 μC/cm2 and coercive electric fields (Ec) of 340–370 kV/cm. On the other hand, when PZT films were grown on SRO without terrace ledges, PZT films showed no saturated hysteresis loops because of large leakage current. The 15nm-thick PZT ultrathin film exhibiting unsaturated hysteresis loop was also obtained.

Piezoresponse measurements using scanning probe microscopy (SPM) were performed for island structures at the initial growth stage of Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) (Zr/Ti=0/100, 24/76 and 74/26) thin films prepared by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition(MOCVD). Deposition times were varied from 5s to 7min to control the size of PZT islands. When deposition times were shorter than 3min, (111)-oriented triangular-shaped PZT islands were observed before forming a continuous film. The width and height of PZT islands deposited at 3min were 160 and 70nm for Zr/Ti = 0/100, 100 and 30nm for Zr/Ti = 24/76, and 80 and 20nm for Zr/Ti = 74/26, respectively. The size of islands decreased with increasing the Zr composition. Hysteresis loops due to polarization switching were observed in the phase difference and displacement of piezoresponse measured using scanning probe microscopy (SPM). This result proves that nano-size PZT islands have weak ferroelectricity. The minimum width and height of PZT islands which showed ferroelectricity were 70 and 30nm for Zr/Ti=24/76.

Ir films were prepared on SiO2/Si at 275-500°C by M°CVD (Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition) using a new Ir precursor, Ir(EtCp)(cod) (iridium(ethylcyclopentadienyl) (1,5-cyclo°Ctadiene): Ir(C2H5C5H4)(1,5-C8H12). Ir films prepared at 275-300°C showed highly reflecting surfaces with Rrms roughness (root-mean-square roughness) of 1.4-10nm. At 500°C, Ir and IrO2 mixture-oriented films were grown. Ir films deposited at 300°C on patterned SiO2/Si substrates with aspect ratios of 0.3-2.0 showed good step coverage of 70-85%. Auger analysis revealed that Ir film had no incorporation of carbon and oxygen, and that Ir films performed well as a diffusion barrier in PZT/Ir/SiO2/Si structure.

Domain structure and growth mechanism of PbTiO3 thin films were investigated using a transmission electron microscopy(TEM) from the viewpoint of size effects. At initial growth stage of (111)-oriented PbTiO3 films prepared by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition(MOCVD), triangle-shaped islands were grown on Pt(111)/SiO2/Si before becoming a continuous film. Triangular islands grew gradually in a lateral dimension. This means that PbTiO3 films grew two-dimensionally at initial growth stage. In cross-sectional TEM photomicrographs, (101)-twin boundaries (90° domain walls) and inclination of {110} or {101}-plane were observed in PbTiO3 islands. This result indicates that such small PbTiO3 islands have a tetragonal structure and could have spontaneous polarization. The minimum island which had 90° domain walls was 10nm high and 18nm wide.

One of the difficulties of light ion beam fusion is to propagate the beam in the reactor cavity and to focus the beam on the target. The light ion beam has some local divergence angle because there are several causes for divergence at the diode. The ion beam propagates with a speed of one tenth of light speed. With this high speed, the leading edge of the ion beam cannot be charge-neutralized due to the delay of neutralization by the inertia of thermal electrons in the background plasma. The electrostatic force induced by this mechanism at the leading edge causes the beam divergence during propagation. To confine the beam in a small radius during propagation, the magnetic field must play a role. Here the electron beam is proposed to be launched simultaneously with the launch of a proton beam. If the electron beam has the excess current, the beam induces the magnetic field in the negative azimuthal direction, which confines the ion beam in a small radius by the electrostatic field, as well as the electron beam by the Lorentz force. The metal guide around the beam path helps the beam confinement and reduces the total amount of magnetic field energy induced by the electron current. Simulation shows that the proton beam with the comoving electron beam propagates in a small radius confined in the metal guide.