The effects of hybrid carbon nanotubes (GNP) and graphite nanoplatelets (GNPs) on the mechanical and electronic properties of epoxy nanocomposites are studied. When the total reinforcement contents were fixed at 2wt%, the nanocomposite containing 1% GNP and 1% CNT achieved the highest electrical conductivity of 4.7×10 -3 S/cm, which was more than two orders of magnitude higher than that of nanocomposites with 2wt% GNP alone. Although the flexural properties were only marginally changed by hybridization, the quasi-static fracture toughness could be enhanced significantly by increasing the CNT contents. Other synergic effects arising from the hybridization are discussed.

Since conventional methods are incapable of estimating the parameters of Photovoltaic (PV) models with high accuracy, bioinspired algorithms have attracted significant attention in the last decade. Cuckoo Search (CS) is invented based on the inspiration of brood parasitic behavior of some cuckoo species in combination with the Lévy flight behavior. In this paper, a CS-based parameter estimation method is proposed to extract the parameters of single-diode models for commercial PV generators. Simulation results and experimental data show that the CS algorithm is capable of obtaining all the parameters with extremely high accuracy, depicted by a low Root-Mean-Squared-Error (RMSE) value. The proposed method outperforms other algorithms applied in this study.

BackgroundThe filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans has been a tractable model organism for cell biology and genetics for over 60 years. It is among a large number of Aspergilli whose genomes have been sequenced since 2005, including medically and industrially important species. In order to advance our knowledge of its biology and increase its utility as a genetic model by improving gene annotation we sequenced the transcriptome of A. nidulans with a focus on 5′ end analysis.ResultsStrand-specific whole transcriptome sequencing showed that 80-95% of annotated genes appear to be expressed across the conditions tested. We estimate that the total gene number should be increased by approximately 1000, to 11,800. With respect to splicing 8.3% of genes had multiple alternative transcripts, but alternative splicing by exon-skipping was very rare. 75% of annotated genes showed some level of antisense transcription and for one gene, meaB, we demonstrated the antisense transcript has a regulatory role. Specific sequencing of the 5’ ends of transcripts was used for genome wide mapping of transcription start sites, allowing us to interrogate over 7000 promoters and 5′ untranslated regions.ConclusionsOur data has revealed the complexity of the A. nidulans transcriptome and contributed to improved genome annotation. The data can be viewed on the AspGD genome browser.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-14-847) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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