On the Spin-Rotation-Gravity Coupling

The inertial and gravitational properties ofintrinsic spin are discussed and some of the recent workin this area is briefly reviewed. The extension ofrelativistic wave equations to accelerated systems and gravitational fields is criticallyexamined. A nonlocal theory of accelerated observers ispresented and its predictions are compared withobservation.     

Simplified inverse z‐transform

A simplified method for the determination of inverse z‐transforms is presented. This technique provides an alternative to partial‐fraction expansion. With knowledge of the signal poles and the time domain sequence, the inverse z‐transform can be accomplished by solving a set of simultaneous equations. The time domain sequence is easily found by long division of the z‐transform.     

Evaluation of a new method for chemical coating of aluminum wire with molecularly imprinted polymer layer. Application for the fabrication of triazines selective solid-phase microextraction fiber

A new solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fiber is fabricated through ultra violet irradiation polymerization of ametryn-molecularly imprinted polymer on the surface of anodized-silylated aluminum wire. The prepared fiber is durable with very good chemical and thermal stability which can be coupled to GC and GC/MS. The effective parameters on the fabrication and application procedures such as spraying mode, ultra violet irradiation (polymerization) time, number of sprayings and polymerizations, pH and ionic strength of sample and extraction time were optimized. This fiber shows high selectivity with great extraction capacity toward triazines. SPME and GC analysis of ametryn, prometryn, terbutryn, atrazine, simazine, propazine and cyanazine using the fabricated fiber result in the detection limits of 9, 32, 27, 43, 51, 74 and 85 ng mL⁻¹, respectively. The reliability of the prepared fiber in real samples has been investigated and proved by using spiked tap water, rice, maize and onion samples.     

Compression of digital holograms via adaptive-sparse representation

Efficient storage and transmission of digital holograms (DHs) requires the development of appropriate compression techniques for such a special class of images. In this Letter, we investigate a method to compress DHs using a sparse matrix representation. Using digital holography to numerically manage complex wave fields, we are able to apply an adaptive mask, based on a threshold filter, to the object wave field. From there, we store the result of this filtering by sparse representation. In this Letter, we demonstrate that using sparse representation allows for a high compression factor with minimal loss in the quality of the reconstructed image. This technique is efficient for storage and transmission of DHs.     

Three-dimensional optical microscopy using axially distributed image sensing

We propose three-dimensional (3D) optical microscopy using axially distributed image sensing. In the proposed method, the micro-objects are optically magnified and their axially distributed images are recorded by moving the image sensor along a common optical axis. The 3D volumetric images are generated from the recorded axial image set using a computational reconstruction algorithm based on ray backprojection. Preliminary experimental results are presented. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on 3D optical microscopy using axially distributed sensing.     

Electrochemical characterization of 2, 2′-[1, 2-ethanediylbis (nitriloethylidyne)]-bis-hydroquinone-carbon nanotube paste electrode and its application to simultaneous voltammetric determination of ascorbic acid and uric acid

The preparation and electrochemical characterization of a carbon nanotube paste electrode modified with 2,2′-[1,2-ethanediylbis (nitriloethylidyne)]-bis-hydroquinone, referred to as EBNBH, was investigated. The EBNBH carbon nanotube paste electrode (EBNBHCNPE) displayed one pair of reversible peaks at E _pa = 0.18 V and E _pc = 0.115 V vs Ag/AgCl. Half wave potential (E _1/2) and ΔE _p were 0.148 and 0.065 V vs Ag/AgCl, respectively. The electrocatalytic oxidation of ascorbic acid (AA) has been studied on EBNBHCNPE, using cyclic voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry and chronoamperometry techniques. It has been shown that the oxidation of AA occurs at a potential where oxidation is not observed at the unmodified carbon paste electrode. The heterogeneous rate constant for oxidation of AA at the EBNBHCNPE was also determined and found to be about 1.07 × 10⁻³ cm s⁻¹. The diffusion coefficient of AA was also estimated as 5.66 × 10⁻⁶ cm² s⁻¹ for the experimental conditions, using chronoamperometry. Also, this modified electrode presented the property of electrocatalysing the oxidation of AA and uric acid (UA) at 0.18 and 0.35 V vs Ag/AgCl, respectively. The separations of anodic peak potentials of AA and UA reached 0.17 V. Using differential pulse voltammetry, the calibration curves for AA and UA were obtained over the range of 0.1–800 μM and 20–700 μM, respectively. With good selectivity and sensitivity, the present method provides a simple method for selective detection of AA and UA in biological samples.     

Rank annihilation factor analysis for multicomponent kinetic‐spectrophotometric determination using difference spectra

In this work rank annihilation factor analysis (RAFA) is used to analyze difference spectra of kinetic‐spectrophotometric data. Annihilation of the contribution of one chemical component from the original data matrix is a general method in RAFA. However, sometimes RAFA is not suitable for studying rank deficient data such as kinetic‐spectrophotometric measurements. On the other hand, in order to apply RAFA for the determination of an analyte in an unknown sample, a standard two‐way matrix of the analyte with rank one should generally be available. This is not usually attainable for kinetic‐spectrophotometric monitoring of complexation reactions. Processes monitored by difference spectroscopy always have the spectrum of the initial stage subtracted from each spectrum in the data matrix. In this work we show that, for kinetic‐spectrophotometric data of complexation reactions, the spectrum of ligand (reactant) itself can be used as initial spectrum for subtraction. The obtained difference matrix of sample and that of analyte of interest will be full‐rank and rank 1, respectively. Therefore the system can be analyzed by RAFA. The proposed method was investigated with simulated data at the first stage. The method was then applied in the analysis of experimental kinetic‐spectrophotometric data of a complexation reactions of Co(II) and Ni(II) with chromogenic reagent 1‐(2‐pyridylazo) 2‐naphthol in order to do multi‐component determination of these ions in various real samples. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multicomponent acid-base titration by principal component-artificial neural network calibration

In this study, a three-layered feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) trained by back-propagation learning was used to model the complex non-linear relationship between the concentration of anthranilic acid (HA), nicotinic acid (HN), picolinic acid (HP) and sulfanilic acid (HS) in their quaternary mixtures and the pH of solutions at different volumes of the added titrant. The principal components of the pH matrix were used as the input of the network. The network architecture and parameters were optimized to give low prediction error. The optimized networks predicted the concentrations of acids in synthetic mixtures. The results showed that the ANN used can proceed the titration data with low percent relative error of prediction (i.e.<4%). A comparison between the ANN and PLS methods revealed the superiority of the results obtained by the former method.