Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2017-12-05"

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Imaging phospholipid conformational disorder and packing in giant multilamellar liposome by confocal Raman microspectroscopy
(2017-12-05)
Noothalapati, Hemanth
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Iwasaki, Keita
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Yoshimoto, Chikako
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Yoshikiyo, Keisuke
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Nishikawa, Tomoe
Liposomes are closed phospholipid bilayer systems that have profound applications in fundamental cell biology, pharmaceutics and medicine. Depending on the composition (pure or mixture of phospholipids, presence of cholesterol) and preparation protocol; intra- and inter-chain molecular interactions vary leading to changes in the quality (order and packing) of liposomes. So far it is not possible to image conformational disorders and packing densities within a liposome in a straightforward manner. In this study, we utilized confocal Raman microspectroscopy to visualize structural disorders and packingefficiency within a giant multilamellar liposome model by focusing mainly on three regions in the vibrational spectrum (C-C stretching, C-H deformation and C-H stretching). We estimated properties such as trans/gauche isomers and lateral packing probability. Interestingly, our Raman imaging studies revealed gel phase rich domains and heterogeneous lateral packing within the giant multilamellar liposome. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Van der Waals oxide heteroepitaxy
(2017-12-05)
Chu, Ying-Hao
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材料科學與工程學系
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電子物理學系
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Department of Materials Science and Engineering
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Department of Electrophysics
The research field of oxide heteroepitaxy suffers from the characteristics of misfit strain and substrate clamping, hampering the optimization of performance and the gain of fundamental understanding of oxide systems. Recently, there are demonstrations on functional oxides epitaxially fabricated on layered muscovite substrate. In these heterostructures, due to the weak interaction between substrate and film, they show the lattice of films close to bulk with excellent strictive properties, suggesting that these critical problems can be potentially solved by van der Waals oxide heteroepitaxy. In addition, by exploiting the transparent and flexible features of muscovite, such a heteroepitaxy can deliver new material solutions to transparent soft technology. In this paper, the history, development, and current status of van der Waals oxide heteroepitaxy are addressed and discussed. In the end, new research directions in terms of fundamental study and practical application are proposed to highlight the importance of this research field.
A novel post-processing scheme for two-dimensional electrical impedance tomography based on artificial neural networks
(2017-12-05)
Martin, Sebastien
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Choi, Charles T. M.
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分子醫學與生物工程研究所
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資訊工程學系
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電機工程學系
Objective Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a powerful non-invasive technique for imaging applications. The goal is to estimate the electrical properties of living tissues by measuring the potential at the boundary of the domain. Being safe with respect to patient health, non-invasive, and having no known hazards, EIT is an attractive and promising technology. However, it suffers from a particular technical difficulty, which consists of solving a nonlinear inverse problem in real time. Several nonlinear approaches have been proposed as a replacement for the linear solver, but in practice very few are capable of stable, high-quality, and real-time EIT imaging because of their very low robustness to errors and inaccurate modeling, or because they require considerable computational effort. Methods In this paper, a post-processing technique based on an artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed to obtain a nonlinear solution to the inverse problem, starting from a linear solution. While common reconstruction methods based on ANNs estimate the solution directly from the measured data, the method proposed here enhances the solution obtained from a linear solver. Conclusion Applying a linear reconstruction algorithm before applying an ANN reduces the effects of noise and modeling errors. Hence, this approach significantly reduces the error associated with solving 2D inverse problems using machine-learning-based algorithms.
A feasibility study on non-invasive oxidative metabolism detection and acoustic assessment of human vocal cords by using optical technique
(2017-12-05)
Lin, Tzu-Chieh
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Chen, Jung-Chih
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Liu, Chih-Hsien
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Lee, Chia-Yen
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Tsou, Yung-An
Voice disorder such as vocal fatigue is a common and complex multifaceted clinical problem that presents a significant impact on quality of life. In this study, the functional near-infrared diffuse optical technique (fNIRS-DOT) was proposed as a novel approach for human vocal cords oxidative metabolism detection and acoustic assessment simultaneously to provide a multidimensional assessment of voice disorder. A totally of 60 healthy subjects included 30 male and 30 female adults of age-matched were recruited and performed a vocal loading task to trigger a mild inflammation of the vocal cords in this study. In the results of oxidative metabolism, the vocal cords expressed hypoxia after vocal loading task in both male and female groups that could provide relevant information on the relationship between tissue oxygen consumption and supply for vocal cords diagnosis. Additionally, the results of optical acoustic assessment revealed the worse/changes voice quality after vocal loading task. Therefore, integration of non-invasive oxidative metabolism detection and acoustic assessment by using optical technique could provide more relevant information for diagnosis of voice disorders. The multi-functional vocal cords detection system could provide a good feasibility for clinical applications such as diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of voice disorder.
交大e-News第245期-引領全球半導體產業五十年施敏教授獲IEEE頒「尊榮會員」為台灣首位獲獎人
(2017-12-05)
國立交通大學秘書室
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Secretariat
Haptacyclic Carbazole-Based Ladder-Type Nonfullerene Acceptor with Side-Chain Optimization for Efficient Organic Photovoltaics
(2017-12-06)
Hsiao, Yu-Tang
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Li, Chia-Hua
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Chang, Shao-Ling
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Heo, Soowon
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Tajima, Keisuke
In this research, a haptacyclic carbazole-based dithienocyclopentacarbazole (DTCC) ladder-type structure was formylated to couple with two 1,1-dicyanomethylene-3-indanone (IC) moieties, forming a new nonfullerene acceptor DTCCIC-C17 using a bulky branched 1-octylnonayl side chain at the nitrogen of the embedded carbazole and four 4-octylphenyl groups at the sp(3)-carbon bridges. The rigid and coplanar main-chain backbone of the DTCC core provides a broad light-absorbing window and a higher-lying LUMO energy level, whereas the bulky flanked side chains reduce intermolecular interactions, making DTCCIC-C17 amorphous with excellent solution processability. The DTCCIC-C17 as an acceptor is combined with a medium band gap polymer poly[(2,6-(4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-y1)-benzo[1,2-b:4,5-bldithiophene))-alt-(5,5-(1',3'-di-2-thieny1-5',7'-bis(2-ethylhexyl)benzo[1',2'-c:4',5'-c']dithiophene-4,8-dione))] (PBDB-T) as the donor in the active layer to obtain suitable highest occupied molecular orbital/lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy alignments and complimentary absorption. The devices with an inverted configuration (ITO/ZnO/active layer/MoO3/Ag) without using an aqueous poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate layer were fabricated for better device stability. When the diiodooctane-treated PBDB-T:DTCCIC-C17 active layer was thermally annealed at 50 degrees C for 10 min, the device achieved the highest efficiency of 9.48% with a high V-oc of 0.98 V, a J(sc) of 14.27 mA cm(-2), and an FF of 0.68.
Luminescent Spectral Conversion to Improve the Performance of Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells
(2017-12-06)
Hosseini, Zahra
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Taghavinia, Nima
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Diau, Eric Wei-Guang
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應用化學系
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應用化學系分子科學碩博班
Relative to the broadband solar spectrum, a narrow range of spectral absorption of photovoltaic (PV) devices is considered an important determinant that the efficiency of light harvesting of these devices is less than unity. Having the narrowest spectral response to solar radiation among all PV devices, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) suffer severely from this loss. Luminescent spectral conversion provides a mechanism to manipulate and to adapt the incident solar spectrum by converting, through photoluminescence, the energies of solar photons into those that are more effectively captured by a PV device. This mechanism is particularly helpful for DSSCs because there is much flexibility in both the choice of the light-harvesting materials and the architecture of the DSSC. Here we review and discuss recent advances in the field of luminescent spectral conversion for DSSCs. The focus is on the architectural design of DSSCs, and the complications, advantages and new functionalities offered by each of their configurations are discussed. The loss mechanisms are examined and important parameters governing the spectral conversion mechanism of a DSSC are introduced.
Characterization and modeling of SET/RESET cycling induced read-disturb failure time degradation in a resistive switching memory
(2017-12-07)
Su, Po-Cheng
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Hsu, Chun-Chi
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Du, Sin-I
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Wang, Tahui
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電機學院
Read operation induced disturbance in SET-state in a tungsten oxide resistive switching memory is investigated. We observe that the reduction of oxygen vacancy density during read-disturb follows power-law dependence on cumulative read-disturb time. Our study shows that the SET-state read-disturb immunity progressively degrades by orders of magnitude as SET/RESET cycle number increases. To explore the cause of the read-disturb degradation, we perform a constant voltage stress to emulate high-field stress effects in SET/RESET cycling. We find that the read-disturb failure time degradation is attributed to high-field stress-generated oxide traps. Since the stress-generated traps may substitute for some of oxygen vacancies in forming conductive percolation paths in a switching dielectric, a stressed cell has a reduced oxygen vacancy density in SET-state, which in turn results in a shorter read-disturb failure time. We develop an analytical read-disturb degradation model including both cycling induced oxide trap creation and read-disturb induced oxygen vacancy reduction. Our model can well reproduce the measured read-disturb failure time degradation in a cycled cell without using fitting parameters. Published by AIP Publishing.
Self-assembly of single amino acid/pyrene conjugates with unique structure-morphology relationship
(2017-12-07)
Nelli, Srinivasa Rao
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Chakravarthy, Rajan Deepan
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Xing, Yue-Ming
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Weng, Jen-Po
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Lin, Hsin-Chieh
This article describes the self-assembly of pi-conjugated building blocks composed of single amino acid and pyrene (Py) moieties. In aqueous conditions, the Py-capped amino acids undergo self-assembly through various non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen-bonding, pi-pi stacking as well as electrostatic interactions to form supramolecular nanostructures in acidic and basic conditions. Interestingly, we found that the blend of different Py-gelators with oppositely charged amino acids (Py-Glu and Py-Lys) displays unique nano-structural morphologies and gelation properties of the resulting hydrogels at physiological pH when compared with single Py conjugates, which was attributed to additional electrostatic interactions. Overall, this report illustrates the importance of two-component supramolecular co-assembled hydrogels and their structure-morphology relationship, improved mechanical properties, and biocompatibility and thus provides a new insight into the design of self-assembled nanomaterials.
Primary prevention of myocardial infarction with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers in hypertensive patients with rheumatoid arthritis - A nationwide cohort study
(2017-12-07)
Lin, Ting-Tse
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Wu, Cho-Kai
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Liao, Min-Tsun
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Yang, Yao-Hsu
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Chen, Pau-Chung
Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is regarded as a high risk factor for myocardial infarction. Hypertension is a major modifiable risk factor contributing to increased risk of myocardial infarction (MI). Dual blood pressure (BP)-lowering and anti-inflammatory effect of renin-angiotensinsystem (RAS) inhibitors may possess protective effect from MI in RA population. However, treatment of hypertension with RAS inhibitors and MI in RA population remains unclear. Methods We investigated whether RAS blockade could decrease risk of incident MI in hypertensive patients with RA. We identified patients with RA and hypertension from the Registry for Catastrophic Illness, a nation-wide database encompassing almost all of the RA patients in Taiwan from 1995 to 2008. The primary endpoint was MI and the median duration of follow up was 2,986 days. Propensity score weighting and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate hazard ratios for MI. Results Among 27,335 subjects, 9.9% received angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs), 25.9% received angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs) and 20.0% received ACEIs or ARBs alternatively. The incidence of MI significantly decreased in patients treated with ACEIs (hazard ratio 0.707; 95% confidence interval 0.595 - 0.840), ARBs (0.641; 0.550 - 0.747) and ACEIs/ARBs (0.631; 0.539 - 0.739). The protective effect of ACEI or ARB therapy was significantly better in patients taking longer duration. The effect remained robust in subgroup analyses. Conclusions Therapy of ACEIs or ARBs is associated with a lower risk of MI among patients with RA. Hence, hypertension in patients with RA could comprise a compelling indication for RAS inhibitors.
Unraveling current hysteresis effects in regular-type C-60-CH3NH3PbI3 heterojunction solar cells
(2017-12-07)
Chen, Lung-Chien
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Lin, Yu-Shiang
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Tang, Po-Wen
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Tai, Chao-Yi
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Tseng, Zong-Liang
Comprehensive studies were carried out to understand the origin of the current hysteresis effects in highly efficient C-60-CH3NH3PbI3(MAPbI(3)) heterojunction solar cells, using atomic-force microscopy, transmittance spectra, photoluminescence spectra, X-ray diffraction patterns and a femtosecond time-resolved pump-probe technique. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of C-60-MAPbI(3) solar cells can be increased to 18.23% by eliminating the point (lattice) defects in the MAPbI(3) thin film which is fabricated by using the one-step spin-coating method with toluene washing treatment. The experimental results show that the point defects and surface defects of the MAPbI(3) thin films can be minimized by varying the dropping time of the washing solvent. The point defects (surface defects) can be reduced with an (a) increase (decrease) in the dropping time, resulting in an optimized dropping time for obtaining the defect-minimized MAPbI(3) thin film deposited on top of the C-60 thin film. Consequently, the formation of the defect-minimized MAPbI(3) thin film allows for high-efficiency MAPbI(3) solar cells.
可可夜總會　至死不渝的愛
(2017-12-10)
謝宛蓁
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
皮克斯和迪士尼聯手打造的《可可夜總會》，是繼連續兩部續作電影後推出的原創長篇動畫，隨著電影逐漸打出好口碑，也該是時候瞭解這部絢麗的催淚之作。
北藝大畢業公演　魔幻上陣
(2017-12-10)
馮瑜庭
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甘愷璇
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
國立台北藝術大學戲劇學院畢業公演於11月底正式演出，學生展現努力多時的成果，驚豔全場。
黑色夢魘
(2017-12-10)
戴淨妍
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
以《十日談》中的潘比妮亞為第一人稱撰寫短篇故事，除了讚揚個人的價值，也藉此諷刺當前社會的某些人、事。
生命的第二次機會
(2017-12-10)
李哲君
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
莉丰慧館是擁有一千七百多隻流浪狗的流浪動物之家，並特別著重於收留與照護傷病犬。到了這裡的流浪動物可能不再有名字，但卻有了再次好好活下去的機會。
打擊肥胖　從基因著手？
(2017-12-10)
賴昀君
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
錨蛋白B是掌握肥胖的關鍵。根據最新研究，它極有可能是引起肥胖的另外一種原因。
違章租屋　學生住宅安全大危機
(2017-12-10)
謝瀚陞
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
新北市的中和火警再次將違章議題帶上檯面，而其中的違章租屋又是以弱勢團體為主要的承租戶，學生們也往往在房租的考量下，選擇相較低廉的違章住宅，但到底學生能如何保障自己的權益呢？
總編輯的話
(2017-12-10)
朱珈漪
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
本期為喀報278期，共14篇稿件。本期文章均有不錯的表現，水準相近且文筆流暢，因此以不同類目與話題性作為輪播選擇標準。
別再互相傷害了！告別情緒勒索
(2017-12-10)
王沛軒
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
什麼是情緒勒索？我也被情緒勒索了嗎？誰才是勒索的那一方？透過層層剖析，帶你一起認識「情緒勒索」。
糞菌移植　用大便治病？
(2017-12-10)
王貞懿
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Department of Communication and Technology
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傳播與科技學系
你知道其實糞便可以用來治病嗎？透過糞菌移植，能治療細菌感染引起的腸道疾病。除此之外，也有研究指出或許糞菌移植也能移植「情緒」。