Magnetic shielding inductive fault currentlimiterswith high temperature superconducting cylinders have previously been described by a characteristic (or maximum)hysteresisloop, built from properties of their constitutive parts, which allowed predicting their behavior in electrical grids. These preliminary results were based on finite elements simulations, but posterior experiments suggested limitations in the models. In order to investigate the application of these previous models to real devices, two laboratory scale prototypes were built with different types of superconducting material in the secondary, either bulk cylinder, either tape. Although the behavior of both devices is still approximately defined by a maximumhysteresisloop, differences in the shielding current response, when compared with previous model, must be incorporated in future models.

We have projected and fabricated a microfluidic platform for DNA sensing that makes use of an optical colorimetric detection method based on gold nanoparticles. The platform was fabricated using replica moulding technology in PDMS patterned by high-aspect-ratio SU-8 moulds. Biochips of various geometries were tested and evaluated in order to find out the most efficient architecture, and the rational for design, microfabrication and detection performance is presented. The best biochip configuration has been successfully applied to the DNA detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis using only 3. l on DNA solution (i.e. 90. ng of target DNA), therefore a 20-fold reduction of reagents volume is obtained when compared with the actual state of the art. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

We demonstrate fully transparent, highly rectifying contacts (TRC) on amorphous GaInZnO and compare them to TRC fabricated on single crystalline bulk ZnO and heteroepitaxial ZnO thin films. The contacts' transparency in the visible spectral range exceeds 70%. From numerical simulations, we conclude that thermionic emission is the dominating transport mechanism, however, for several samples with low net doping density diffusion theory must be applied. The detailed investigation of the rectification properties of the TRC using temperature-dependent current-voltage and capacitance-voltage measurements reveals that barrier inhomogeneities govern the IV-characteristics of all diodes irrespective of the sample crystallinity. Assuming a Gaussian barrier height distribution, the extracted mean barrier heights typically range between 1.1 and 1.3 V. The width of the barrier distribution correlates with the mean barrier height and ranges from 110 to 130 mV. By compiling literature data, we found that this correlation holds also true for Schottky diodes on elemental and III-V semiconductors. © 2013 American Institute of Physics.

Habitat fragmentation is a serious threat for the sustainability of species. Thus, the identification of effective linkages to connect valuable ecological units is an important issue in conservation biology. The design of effective linkages should take into account that areas which are adequately permeable for some species’ dispersal may act as obstructions for other species. The determination of minimum cost effective linkages is a generalization of both node-weighted Steiner tree and node-weighted Steiner forest problems. We compare the performance of different procedures for this problem using large real and simulated instances.