Improving light output by micro-TiO2 scatters in pc-WLED encapsulants.

Phosphor-converted white light emitting diodes (pc-WLEDs) are used worldwide for an extensive amount of applications. The device is a complex combination of various components that introduce various technical issues: materials, electrical, chemical, thermal, and so on. All of these combined to obtain a targeted optical characteristic. While most of the pc-WLEDs are sufficient for basic illumination performance, there are still many issues to improve the pc-WLED performance. In this work, we deal with the incorporation of micron size particles of titanium oxide (TiO2) in silicone encapsulant that contains yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) phosphor in remote phosphor pc-WLED. Based on the light output and the scattering spatial distribution measurements of the phosphor plates, we have found that several essential performance indices, like the color uniformity, the efficiency, and the amount of phosphor for the pc-WLEDs, can be adjusted by tuning the amount of TiO2 particles and thus be optimized. With a comprehensive model using a Monte-Carlo ray tracing process combined with the Mie scattering theory, two TiO2 loading conditions are revealed. The first one is the sparse condition that the TiO2 particles act as the scattering particles such as to increase the output flux to improve the efficiency of YAG. The second one is the dense condition that the TiO2 particles act more as barrier particles such so to decrease the output flux.

Trophic Dynamics and Feeding Ecology of Skipjack Tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) off Eastern and Western Taiwan.

The skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) is a mesopredator fish species with seasonal abundance in waters off Taiwan. Regional ecological and life-history information has been historically lacking for this species. In recent years, stable isotope analysis (SIA) of carbon and nitrogen has been used to assess predator feeding ecology and broader ecosystem trophic dynamics. This study evaluated comparative skipjack feeding ecology in distinct regions off Taiwan, combining traditional stomach content analysis with SIA of individuals off western (n = 43; 2020) and eastern (n = 347; 2012-2014 and n = 167; 2020) Taiwan. The stomach content analysis showed the most important prey to be ponyfish (Photopectoralis bindus) in western Taiwan and epipelagic squids (Myopsina spp.) and carangids (Decapterus macrosoma;) in eastern Taiwan from 2012 to 2014 and epipelagic carangids (Decapterus spp.) and flying fishes (Cheilopogon spp.) in eastern Taiwan in 2020, suggesting that the skipjack tuna is a generalist predator across regions. In contrast, time-integrated diet estimates from Bayesian mixing models indicated the importance of cephalopods and crustaceans as prey, potentially demonstrating more mesopelagic feeding in less productive waters during skipjack migrations outside the study regions. Skipjack off western Taiwan had a slightly higher estimated trophic position than in the waters off eastern Taiwan, potentially driven by the varying nutrient-driven pelagic food web structures. Skipjack SI values increased with body size off eastern Taiwan but not in western waters, suggesting that opportunistic predation can still result in different predator-prey size dynamics between regions.

Upstream Open Reading Frame and Phosphate-Regulated Expression of Rice OsNLA1 Controls Phosphate Transport and Reproduction.

Rice (Oryza sativa) OsNLA1 has been proposed to play a crucial role in regulating phosphate (Pi) acquisition in roots, similar to that of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) AtNLA. However, unlike AtNLA, OsNLA1 is not a target of miR827, a Pi starvation-induced microRNA. It is, therefore, of interest to know whether the expression of OsNLA1 depends on Pi supply and how it is regulated. In this study, we provide evidence that OsNLA1 controls Pi acquisition by directing the degradation of several OsPHT1 Pi transporters (i.e. OsPT1/2/4/7/8/12). We further show that OsNLA1 has an additional function in reproduction and uncover the mechanism of its expression regulation. Analysis of mRNA levels, promoter-GUS activity, and protoplast transient expression showed that the expression of OsNLA1.1, the most abundant transcript variant, is up-regulated in response to increasing Pi supply. The OsNLA1 promoter region was found to contain an upstream open reading frame that is required for Pi-responsive expression regulation. OsNLA1 promoter activity was observed in roots, ligules, leaves, sheaths, pollen grains, and surrounding the vascular tissues of anthers, suggesting that OsNLA1 is important throughout the development of rice. Disruption of OsNLA1 resulted in increased Pi uptake from roots as well as impaired pollen development and reduced grain production. In summary, our study reveals that Pi-induced OsNLA1 expression regulated by a unique mechanism functions in Pi acquisition, Pi translocation, and reproductive success.

Single reflector design for integrated low/high beam meeting multiple regulations with light field management.

This paper proposed an effective multi-objective design procedure, called light field management, for a single multi-segment reflector that can simultaneously project low beams and high beams for bicycle and e-bike applications. Furthermore, two different regulations can be met, including the K-mark and the ECE Class B regulations. Through light field management, the etendue and flux density of each segment can be effectively managed, so that the design successfully meets the multiple regulations. In the experimental verification, two mockup samples including a plastic reflector with aluminum coating and an aluminum reflector were fabricated to verify the validity of the design. The experiment showed that the contrast across the cutoff line reached 100 and above, where the brightest point for low beams reached 200 lux and the whole pattern reached 250 lux. The supreme behavior of the head lamp shows that the proposed design procedure is valuable and helpful to an optical designer.

Reduction of phase error on phase-only volume-holographic disc rotation with pre-processing by phase integral.

In this paper, we present a study of observation of phase error of a volume holographic storage disc during the reading process when the disc is rotated or displaced in the theoretical calculation and the corresponding experiment. This additional phase error will dramatically decrease the bit error rate of a phase-only signal, even applying double-frequency shearing interferometry to retrieve the stored phase signal. Then we propose a novel approach to solve the problem. The stored signal is pre-processed by phase integral along the shearing direction so that applying the integral process to decode the phase signal is not necessary in the readout process. The proposed approach effectively reduces the error in phase retrieval and will be useful when applying double-frequency shearing interferometry in the readout process for volume holographic storage.

Depression-free after Interferon-α exposure indicates less incidence of depressive disorder: A longitudinal study in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND: IFN-α-induced depression in patients undergoing hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment provides powerful support for the inflammation hypothesis of depression. Most studies have focused on the occurrence of depressive symptoms, but there has been no study yet in depression-free HCV patients receiving IFN-α. We hypothesized that HCV patients who did not develop depression after IFN-α exposure might have a lower incidence of depressive disorders after the IFN-α treatment. METHODS: We conducted a twelve-year population-based cohort study of chronic HCV patients who received IFN-α therapy. The data were obtained from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. The study cohort was patients without any depressive disorder nor antidepressant use before and during IFN-α therapy. They were matched randomly by age, sex income and urbanization at a ratio of 1:4 with the control cohort of HCV patients without IFN-α therapy. The follow-up started after the last administration of IFN-α, and the primary outcome was the incidence of depressive disorders after IFN-α therapy. RESULTS: A total of 20,468 depression-free subjects were identified from records of HCV patients receiving IFN-α therapy. Patients without IFN-α-induced depression were associated with a significantly lower incidence (per 10,000 person-years) of new-onset depressive disorders (126.8, 95% Confidential Interval [CI] of 118.5-135.6) as compared to the control cohort (145.2, 95% CI of 140.0-150.6) (p < 0.001). After adjusting for age, sex, income, urbanization and comorbid diseases, the crude hazard ratio for the incident depressive disorder was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.80-0.87) and the adjusted hazard ratios was 0.79 (95% CI, 0.72-0.87) for IFN-α-induced depression-free subjects as compared to the controls. DISCUSSION: Our study indicates that IFN-α treated depression-free patients have a lower risk for depressive disorders. This hypothesized mechanism might derive from an IFN-α-induced resilience factor as yet to be defined. CONCLUSIONS: Our study might suggest a new possibility for a new pharmacological strategy against depression.

Adjustable panoramic inspection system for submillimeter fasteners.

Fasteners are critical and indispensable locking components in mechanical assembly. Submillimeter fasteners are massively and widely used in electronic devices. This study proposed an adjustable panoramic inspection system for M2 to M0.8 submillimeter fasteners. The system mainly consists of a panoramic imaging module, a back-light module, and an image grabbing and computing module. The panoramic imaging module would form four equal optical path lengths to keep the same imaging amplification between the different directions of the field of view. The back-light module was designed to provide uniform illumination and enhance the contrast of the pitch edge between the fasteners and the background. The image grabbing and computing module with a high-speed camera was designed to be adjustable for different sizes of submillimeter fasteners. The realized system can offer the function of four images in one shot to make a panoramic scene, independent illumination for recognizing, inspect screws from M0.8 to M2.0 screws, and short time consumption of image processing, such as 3.284 ms for M0.8 screws and 2.384 ms for M2.0 screws, to achieve examination of 6000 pieces in 1 min.

Optical servo with high design freedom using spherical-wave Bragg degeneracy in a volume holographic optical element.

A novel optical sensor is proposed and demonstrated with the use of spherical-wave Bragg degeneracy of a volume holographic optical element. Bragg degeneracy can be performed perfectly for a volume hologram written by two plane waves or spherical waves. But only spherical reference light is useful to perform severe shifting selectivity in one direction and Bragg degeneracy in another direction. The experiment corresponding to theoretical simulation was demonstrated in a volume holographic optical element, which was an optical servo for a collinear volume holographic disc. Through clever design, the displacement response of the tracking beam was observed for a magnification magnitude of 980% to the displacement of the probe beam so that the resolution requirement of the photosensor can be reduced. Besides, a high linearity of the displacement response was observed. To discover the design freedom, a theoretical study of the displacement response was done for the servo by two spherical waves. The linearity, the magnification magnitude, and the diffraction efficiency were examined and the property of the Bragg degeneracy was figured out.

Chinese lexical database (CLD) : A large-scale lexical database for simplified Mandarin Chinese.

We present the Chinese Lexical Database (CLD): a large-scale lexical database for simplified Chinese. The CLD provides a wealth of lexical information for 3913 one-character words, 34,233 two-character words, 7143 three-character words, and 3355 four-character words, and is publicly available through http://www.chineselexicaldatabase.com . For each of the 48,644 words in the CLD, we provide a wide range of categorical predictors, as well as an extensive set of frequency measures, complexity measures, neighborhood density measures, orthography-phonology consistency measures, and information-theoretic measures. We evaluate the explanatory power of the lexical variables in the CLD in the context of experimental data through analyses of lexical decision latencies for one-character, two-character, three-character and four-character words, as well as word naming latencies for one-character and two-character words. The results of these analyses are discussed.

Analysis of a lens-array modulated coaxial holographic data storage system with considering recording dynamics of material.

In the first time, a simulation model with considering the recording dynamics of material is built and is used to simulate evolution of the grating strength of the recorded hologram in a coaxial volume holographic memory system. In addition, phase modulation by lens array in the reference is introduced and observed to perform better diffracted signal quality and higher shifting selectivity, in both simulation and experiment. The use of lens array is found to provide multiple advantages in volume holographic memory system. The new simulation model potentially can be used to precisely design the system to obtain higher diffracted signal quality, higher shifting selectivity, and reduction of M# consumption and increase of storage capacity.

The Mismeasurement of Mind: Life-Span Changes in Paired-Associate-Learning Scores Reflect the "Cost" of Learning, Not Cognitive Decline.

The age-related declines observed in scores on paired-associate-learning (PAL) tests are widely taken as support for the idea that human cognitive capacities decline across the life span. In a computational simulation, we showed that the patterns of change in PAL scores are actually predicted by the models that formalize the associative learning process in other areas of behavioral and neuroscientific research. These models also predict that manipulating language exposure can reproduce the experience-related performance differences erroneously attributed to age-related decline in age-matched adults. Consistent with this, results showed that older bilinguals outperformed native speakers in a German PAL test, an advantage that increased with age. These analyses and results show that age-related PAL performance changes reflect the predictable effects of learning on the associability of test items, and indicate that failing to control for these effects is distorting the understanding of cognitive and brain development in adulthood.

Standard susceptibility testing overlooks potent azithromycin activity and cationic peptide synergy against MDR Stenotrophomonas maltophilia.

OBJECTIVES: The Gram-negative bacillus Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (SM) is an emerging MDR opportunistic pathogen. Recent studies identify a potentially relevant activity of azithromycin against Gram-negative bacteria overlooked in standard bacteriological testing. We investigated azithromycin activity against SM in testing conditions incorporating mammalian tissue culture medium and host defence factors. METHODS: MIC testing, chequerboard assays, time-kill assays and fluorescence microscopy were performed for azithromycin, the cationic peptide antibiotic colistin and the human defence peptide cathelicidin LL-37 alone or in combination in cation-adjusted Mueller-Hinton broth or mammalian tissue culture media. Azithromycin sensitization of SM to host immune clearance was tested in a human neutrophil killing assay and a murine pneumonia model. RESULTS: We observed potent bactericidal activity of azithromycin against SM in mammalian tissue culture medium absent in bacteriological medium. Colistin and LL-37 strongly potentiated azithromycin killing of SM by increasing drug entry. Additionally, azithromycin sensitized SM to neutrophil killing and increased SM clearance in the murine pneumonia model. CONCLUSIONS: Despite lack of activity in standard MIC testing, azithromycin synergizes with cationic peptide antibiotics to kill SM in medium mimicking tissue fluid conditions. Azithromycin, alone or in combination with colistin, merits further exploration in therapy of drug-resistant SM infections.

One-shot and aberration-tolerable homodyne detection for holographic storage readout through double-frequency grating-based lateral shearing interferometry.

A simple method to decode the stored phase signal of volume holographic data storage with adequate wave aberration tolerance is highly demanded. We proposed and demonstrated a one-shot scheme to decode a binary-phase encoding signal through double-frequency-grating based shearing interferometry (DFGSI). The lateral shearing amount is dependent on the focal length of the collimated lens and the frequency difference between the gratings. Diffracted waves with phase encoding were successfully decoded through experimentation. An optical model for the DFGSI was built to analyze phase-error induction and phase-difference control by shifting the double-frequency grating longitudinally and laterally, respectively. The optical model was demonstrated experimentally. Finally, a high aberration tolerance of the DFGSI was demonstrated using the optical model.

Identification of downstream components of ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme PHOSPHATE2 by quantitative membrane proteomics in Arabidopsis roots.

MicroRNA399-mediated regulation of the ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme UBC24/phosphate2 (PHO2) is crucial for Pi acquisition and translocation in plants. Because of a potential role for PHO2 in protein degradation and its association with membranes, an iTRAQ (for isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation)- based quantitative membrane proteomic method was employed to search for components downstream of PHO2. A total of 7491 proteins were identified from Arabidopsis thaliana roots by mass spectrometry, 35.2% of which were predicted to contain at least one transmembrane helix. Among the quantifiable proteins, five were significantly differentially expressed between the wild type and pho2 mutant under two growth conditions. Using immunoblot analysis, we validated the upregulation of several members in phosphate transporter1 (PHT1) family and phosphate transporter traffic facilitator1 (PHF1) in pho2 and demonstrated that PHO2 mediates the degradation of PHT1 proteins. Genetic evidence that loss of PHF1 or PHT1;1 alleviated Pi toxicity in pho2 further suggests that they play roles as downstream components of PHO2. Moreover, we showed that PHO2 interacts with PHT1s in the postendoplasmic reticulum compartments and mediates the ubiquitination of endomembrane-localized PHT1;1. This study not only uncovers a mechanism by which PHO2 modulates Pi acquisition by regulating the abundance of PHT1s in the secretory pathway destined for plasma membranes, but also provides a database of the membrane proteome that will be widely applicable in root biology research.

Novel optical lens design with a light scattering freeform inner surface for LED down light illumination.

Using the precise mid field angular distribution model of the LED light source and the optical scattering surface property of the Harvey BSDF scattering model, we perform optical simulation to develop and design a novel solid plastic optical lens with freeform inner surface to achieve the optical performance of 89.89% light energy transmission optics for the sake of energy saving reason. The 70 degrees angular light distribution pattern defined at full width half maximum (FWHM) light energy level is performed and the optical utilization factor (OUF) of 51.8% is obtained within -45 degrees and 45 degrees range in the areas of interest with glare reduced for the down light illumination.

Effect of chip spacing on light extraction for light-emitting diode array.

GaN LED array in packaging is important for the demand of high optical flux. In order to tighten the whole packaging size, the spacing among LED chips becomes an important factor in the packaging design. This study is to investigate the change of the light extraction when a GaN LED chip array packaging is applied. The shielding effect with various spacing for the GaN LED array with or without silicon encapsulation is obtained. We apply the Monte Carlo ray-tracing method in the simulations to analyze the optical behavior of the two major types of the GaN LED array. The shielding effect is more dominant for bare chip packaging. When a silicone thin dispensing layer is applied, the shielding effect is not obvious because of more light extraction, the neighbor dies play an important role in photon recycling.

Study of temperature distributions in pc-WLEDs with different phosphor packages.

Phosphor converted white LEDs (pc-WLED) with different geometries, namely remote-dome, remote-plate, half-dome, and conformal-coating packages, were studied using simulations to obtain the thermal power and the temperature distribution. The results of an experiment carried out to measure the temperature distribution in these pc-WLEDs validate the simulation results. A hotspot always occurs in the phosphor region. The conformal-coating package is the most feasible choice to reduce the hotspot temperature comparing with the other geometries.