L. Guerra

Targeted metabolite analysis and antioxidant potential of rumex induratus

Targeted metabolite analysis of aqueous extract of Rumex induratus leaves, in terms of phenolic compounds and organic acids, and the study of its antioxidant activity against the DPPH(*) radical, a reactive oxygen species, hypochlorous acid, and a reactive nitrogen species, nitric oxide ((*)NO), were performed. The samples were collected in several locations, spontaneously occurring or from greenhouse culture, at different stages of development and seasons. The phenolic composition was achieved by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-diode array detection, and four hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives and 10 flavonoid glycosides (C- and O-heterosides) were determined. Organic acids composition was established by HPLC-UV, revealing five compounds. The total amount of phenolic compounds and organic acids were affected by growing conditions and developmental phase. The aqueous extract exhibited a dose-related activity against all tested reactive species.

Memristor-based Willshaw network: Capacity and robustness to noise in the presence of defects

The recent realization of memristors, nanodevices remarkably similar to biological synapses, opened the possibility to fabricate highly scalable artificial neural networks. While the physical implementation of such networks is still emerging, it is useful to perform simulations to determine the impact of non-ideal devices or device faults in the performance of memory networks. Here, we numerically evaluate a memristor-based Willshaw associative memory network, studying its capacity and robustness to noise as a function of defects probability and device parameter variations. Two types of defective memristors are addressed (stuck-at-0 and stuck-at-1) and Gaussian distributions are imposed to their threshold voltages, ON and OFF resistances. We conclude that the type and number of defects strongly determine how the network should be operated. The reading current threshold also plays a key role in determining the networks capacity and robustness to noise. Furthermore, there is a maximum defect percentage abo...

Conductivity enhancement and resistance changes in polymer films filled with reduced graphene oxide

The electrical properties of polymer composites based on polycarbonate (PC) and panipol CXM (CX), filled with reduced graphene oxide (rGO), were investigated. The composite preparation conditions allowed good dispersion of rGO in the polymer matrix. We show here that when used as a nanofiller in polymers, rGO offers an appreciable improvement of the electrical current in 3 orders of magnitude (from 10−10 A to 10−7 A at 10 V), as observed in current-voltage (I-V) data for both PC and CX polymers with rGO. The suggested mechanism for the observed switching effects is the migration of oxygen groups aided by both the electrical field and Joule heating. Moreover, some reset- and set- like changes similar to resistive switching were observed in the I-V data of PC and CX-based films upon the addition of rGO. Clockwise (resembling a memristive system type II) and counter-clockwise (resembling a memristive system type I) directions were detected in the I-V data of the analyzed films. According to the obtained resu...