Potassium sodium chloride integrated microconduits in a potentiometric analytical system

The preparation and application of a K(+), Na(+) and Cl(-) integrated microconduit potentiometric analytical system with tubular ion-selective electrodes (ISEs), microvalve, chemfold, electrostatic and pulse inhibitors is described. Electrochemical characteristics of the tubular ISEs and integrated microconduit FIA-ISEs were studied. The contents of K(+), Na(+) and Cl(-) in soil, water and serum were determined with the device. The analytical results agreed well with those obtained by flame photometric and silver nitrate volumetric methods.     

Advanced automation of a flow injection analysis system for quality control of olive oil through the use of a distributed expert system

A new methodology—based on the combination of flow injection analysis and a distributed expert system—is proposed for the on-line chemical quality control of olive oil. This knowledge-based system is in charge of carrying out the flow injection determination of total acidity, peroxide value, and UV spectrophotometric measurements (K₂₃₂ and K₂₇₀), according to EU legislation. On the other hand, the expert system, apart from supervising the correct functioning of the system (devices, clogging, analysis frequency, and so on), performs the definite classification of the analyzed oil by evaluating the oil quality from the values yielded, according to previously established specifications. Satisfactory results have been obtained in the application of this approach to different samples of Spanish olive oil along the storage process. The distributed expert system also allows for the remote control of the analysis process owing to the interconnection of the different nodes by means of a communication network.     

Distributed memory parallel implementation of energies and gradients for second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory with the resolution-of-the-identity approximation

We present a parallel implementation of second-order M?ller-Plesset perturbation theory with the resolution-of-the-identity approximation (RI-MP2). The implementation is based on a recent improved sequential implementation of RI-MP2 within the Turbomole program package and employs the message passing interface (MPI) standard for communication between distributed memory nodes. The parallel implementation extends the applicability of canonical MP2 to considerably larger systems. Examples are presented for full geometry optimizations with up to 60 atoms and 3300 basis functions and MP2 energy calculations with more than 200 atoms and 7000 basis functions.     

Quality control criteria for solid-contact, solvent polymeric membrane ion-selective electrodes

After a long history and conflicting views, solid-contact (SC) solvent polymeric membrane ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) emerged as reliable potentometric-sensing devices with unique advantages. From the large variety of proposed SCs inherently conductive polymers emerged as the materials of choice. In our view, the most attractive feature of SC ISEs is their compatibility with thin- and thick-film microfabrication technologies that can provide cheap, mass-produced sensors and sensor arrays that can be integrated with the measuring, data acquisition, and control electronics in a straightforward way. However, despite the impressive properties of certain SC electrodes and their potential advantages, they remained primarily in the research laboratories. To make the jump from the research laboratories into commercial devices, it would be essential to prove that miniaturized SC ISEs can indeed match or surpass the performance characteristics of the conventional, liquid-contact macroelectrodes. In addition, it would be important to settle on the quality control criteria and testing protocols for assessing the performance characteristics of SC electrodes. It could help in interpreting the sometimes-inconsistent experimental data. Once cheap, miniaturized, SC ISEs will mach the performance characteristics of macroscopic-size electrodes, it is expected to have an important impact in a variety of applications requiring robust, maintenance-free, or single-use ISEs, e.g., in homecare or bedside diagnostics, environmental analysis, and quality control assessment. In addition, reliable SC ISEs are expected to revitalize the field of ion-selective field effect transistors and open new possibilities in combination with nanowire-based devices.     

Massively parallel algorithm and implementation of RI‐MP2 energy calculation for peta‐scale many‐core supercomputers

A new parallel algorithm and its implementation for the RI‐MP2 energy calculation utilizing peta‐flop‐class many‐core supercomputers are presented. Some improvements from the previous algorithm (J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2013, 9, 5373) have been performed: (1) a dual‐level hierarchical parallelization scheme that enables the use of more than 10,000 Message Passing Interface (MPI) processes and (2) a new data communication scheme that reduces network communication overhead. A multi‐node and multi‐GPU implementation of the present algorithm is presented for calculations on a central processing unit (CPU)/graphics processing unit (GPU) hybrid supercomputer. Benchmark results of the new algorithm and its implementation using the K computer (CPU clustering system) and TSUBAME 2.5 (CPU/GPU hybrid system) demonstrate high efficiency. The peak performance of 3.1 PFLOPS is attained using 80,199 nodes of the K computer. The peak performance of the multi‐node and multi‐GPU implementation is 514 TFLOPS using 1349 nodes and 4047 GPUs of TSUBAME 2.5. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Coupled-cluster singles,doubles and perturbative triples with density fitting approximation for massively parallel heterogeneous platforms

A high-performance implementation of the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] is developed in the Massively Parallel Quantum Chemistry program. Novel features include: (1) reduced memory requirements via a density-fitting (DF) CCSD implementation utilizing distributed lazy evaluation for tensors with more than two unoccupied indices and (2) the ability to utilize efficiently many-core nodes (Intel Xeon Phi) and heterogeneous nodes with multiple NVIDIA GPUs on each node. All data that are greater than quadratic in the system size are distributed among processes. Excellent strong scaling is observed on distributed-memory computers equipped with conventional CPUs, Intel Xeon Phi processors, and heterogeneous nodes with multiple NVIDIA GPUs Canonical CCSD(T) energies can be evaluated for systems containing 200 electrons and 1000 basis functions in a few days using a small size commodity cluster, with even larger computations possible on leadership-class computing resources.     

A new hierarchical parallelization scheme: generalized distributed data interface (GDDI), and an application to the fragment molecular orbital method (FMO)

A two-level hierarchical scheme, generalized distributed data interface (GDDI), implemented into GAMESS is presented. Parallelization is accomplished first at the upper level by assigning computational tasks to groups. Then each group does parallelization at the lower level, by dividing its task into smaller work loads. The types of computations that can be used with this scheme are limited to those for which nearly independent tasks and subtasks can be assigned. Typical examples implemented, tested, and analyzed in this work are numeric derivatives and the fragment molecular orbital method (FMO) that is used to compute large molecules quantum mechanically by dividing them into fragments. Numeric derivatives can be used for algorithms based on them, such as geometry optimizations, saddle-point searches, frequency analyses, etc. This new hierarchical scheme is found to be a flexible tool easily utilizing network topology and delivering excellent performance even on slow networks. In one of the typical tests, on 16 nodes the scalability of GDDI is 1.7 times better than that of the standard parallelization scheme DDI and on 128 nodes GDDI is 93 times faster than DDI (on a multihub Fast Ethernet network). FMO delivered scalability of 80-90% on 128 nodes, depending on the molecular system (water clusters and a protein). A numerical gradient calculation for a water cluster achieved a scalability of 70% on 128 nodes. It is expected that GDDI will become a preferred tool on massively parallel computers for appropriate computational tasks.     

基于有序介孔碳的氯离子选择性电极的制备及其在手持传感系统中的应用

以有序介孔碳(OMC)球为离子-电子转换层,制备了固态氯离子选择性电极,构建了基于离子敏感的场效应晶体管(ISFET)的手持式传感系统,用于检测人体血清中的氯离子。优化了OMC前驱体的碳化温度,探究了OMC形貌结构对电极传感性能的影响;电极柔性化制备后考察了其在手持系统中对氯离子的检测效果。结果表明,最优条件下,电极在5.12×10^-4~1.02 mol/L的浓度范围呈现线性响应,响应斜率为60 mV/decade。该柔性电极在手持传感系统中展现出高灵敏度和重现性,可用于人体血清样品中氯离子的检测,其回收率为96.3%~104.9%。     

Parallel density matrix propagation in spin dynamics simulations

Several methods for density matrix propagation in parallel computing environments are proposed and evaluated. It is demonstrated that the large communication overhead associated with each propagation step (two-sided multiplication of the density matrix by an exponential propagator and its conjugate) may be avoided and the simulation recast in a form that requires virtually no inter-thread communication. Good scaling is demonstrated on a 128-core (16 nodes, 8 cores each) cluster.     

Ionophore-Based Ion-Selective Electrodes in Non-Zero Current Modes: Mechanistic Studies and the Possibilities of the Analytical Application

Journal of Analytical Chemistry - This mini review briefly describes (i) literature data on the non-zero current measurements with ionophore-based ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) aimed at...     

用交流阻抗法研究某些离子选择电极的响应特性

用交流阻抗法研究了两种液膜胆R汁酸电极和两种聚氯乙烯(PVC)膜钙离子选择电极. 从体电阻R_b和电荷传递电阻R_(ct)得到膜内离子迁移活化能E_a, 及电极的表观标准交换电流密度i°_0等信息. 结果表明: E_a比R_b更能反映离子在膜内迁移的情况, 离子在PVC膜中的迁移比在液膜中困难得多; i°_0能在一定程度上反映电极性能的优劣等。     

Oligocarbazoles as ligands for lead-selective liquid membrane electrodes.

Oligocarbazoles have been applied as new ionophores in liquid membrane electrodes (ISEs) destined for lead(II) determination in water samples. The oligocarbazole-containing ISEs demonstrated a close-to-Nernstian potentiometric response towards Pb2+ in the activity range 10(-7)-10(-2) M. The selectivity coefficients measured by the matched potential method (MPM) confirmed their good selectivity against common interfering mono- and doubly charged cations. The oligocarbazole-containing ISEs do not respond towards protons. Their applicability has been checked by performing the recovery test while using a sample of wastewater.     

Array files for computational chemistry: MP2 energies

A simple message‐passing implementation for distributed disk storage, called array files (AF), is described. It is designed primarily for parallelizing computational chemistry applications but it should be useful for any application that handles large amounts of data stored on disk. AF allows transparent distributed storage and access of large data files. An AF consists of a set of logically related records, i.e., blocks of data. It is assumed that the records have the typical dimension of matrices in quantum chemical calculations, i.e., they range from 0.1 to ～32 MB in size. The individual records are not striped over nodes; each record is stored on a single node. As a simple application, second‐order Møller‐Plesset (MP2) energies have been implemented using AF. The AF implementation approaches the efficiency of the hand‐coded program. MP2 is relatively simple to parallelize but for more complex applications, such as Coupled Cluster energies, the AF system greatly simplifies the programming effort. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem, 2007.     

New Cyclodextrin-Based Ion-Selective Electrodes for Determining Activity Coefficients of Biologically Important Onium Ions

Ion-selective electrodes (ISEs), apart from fluoride, calcium, and a few others, have not often been used to obtain thermodynamic information on electrolytes. Here, novel cyclodextrin-based ISEs are used to determine activity coefficients of some onium chlorides in aqueous solution. Cyclodextrins, rendered lipophilic by alkylation, have been incorporated into polymeric membranes and used as ionophores in ISEs for sensing the substituted ammonium (onium) ions, choline, acetylcholine, and acetyl--methylcholine. Potentiometric measurements using these cyclodextrin-based ISEs allow the determination of ratios of activity coefficients in solutions. Choosing one solution as reference and using a theoretical model (e.g., Pitzer equations), it is possible to evaluate activity coefficients of individual solutions. Results for choline chloride compare well with limited data in the literature. This is the first time, that ISEs have been used to measure activity coefficients of biologically important ions.     

Surface chemistry and potential response of copper sulfide based ion-selective membrane in ligand solutions

Dissolution of membraneous composite ions of copper sulfide precipitate-based ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) has been measured in various ligand solutions by ICP atomic emission spectrometry and atomic absorption spectrometry from the solution side and by X-ray photoelectron spectrometry on the electrode surface. Asymmetric dissolution, amount of copper dissolved is higher than that of sulfur, was generally observed. The copper dissolution is correlated with the potential response as well as conditional stability constants. The results are discussed in terms of the charge separation caused by the asymmetric dissolution and electrostatic interaction of charged ligands with the space charge on the electrode surface in view of microscopic characterization of ISEs in metal buffer solutions in general. The results were also used to clarify the reason for some discrepancies of complex stability constants obtained by precipitate-based ISEs and other methods.Dedicated to Professor W. Simon on the occasion of his 60th birthday     

Application of nanoparticles in the potentiometric ion selective electrodes

Among the various analytical techniques available, the use of ion-selective electrodes is a wellestablished routine analytical technique. Good ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) possess many advantages over traditional methods for analysis and provide accurate, reproducible, fast, and regular selective determination of various ionic species. Modification of ISEs with nanoparticles has shown interesting ability toward various ions and biological molecules. In this article we review some of developments about applications of nanoparticles in the construction of ISEs in recent years.     

Artificial neural networks for determination of enantiomeric composition of alpha-phenylglycine using UV spectra of cyclodextrin host-guest complexes: comparison of feed-forward and radial basis function networks

In this work feed-forward neural networks and radial basis function networks were used for the determination of enantiomeric composition of alpha-phenylglycine using UV spectra of cyclodextrin host-guest complexes and the data provided by two techniques were compared. Wavelet transformation (WT) and principal component analysis (PCA) were used for data compression prior to neural network construction and their efficiencies were compared. The structures of the wavelet transformation-radial basis function networks (WT-RBFNs) and wavelet transformation-feed-forward neural networks (WT-FFNNs), were simplified by using the corresponding wavelet coefficients of three mother wavelets (Mexican hat, daubechies and symlets). Dilation parameters, number of inputs, hidden nodes, learning rate, transfer functions, number of epochs and SPREAD values were optimized. Performances of the proposed methods were tested with regard to root mean square errors of prediction (RMSE%), using synthetic solutions containing a fixed concentration of beta-cyclodextrin (beta-CD) and fixed concentration of alpha-phenylglycine (alpha-Gly) with different enantiomeric compositions. Although satisfactory results with regard to some statistical parameters were obtained for all the investigated methods but the best results were achieved by WT-RBFNs.     

Effect of chain stiffness and entanglements on the elastic behavior of end-linked elastomers

The effect of chain stiffness and entanglements on the elastic behavior and microscopic structure of cross-linked polymer networks was studied using Monte Carlo simulations. We investigated the behavior of entangled and entanglement-free networks at various degrees of chain stiffness and densities. Based on previous results that indicated that trapped entanglements prevent strain-induced order-disorder transitions in semiflexible chain networks, we prepared the entangled networks by end-linking the chains in very dilute conditions so as to minimize the extent of trapped entanglements. We also considered the entanglement-free case by using a "diamond" structure. We found that the presence of even a very small amount of trapped entanglements is enough to prevent a discontinuous strain-induced transition to an ordered phase. In these mildly entangled networks, a nematiclike order is eventually attained at high extensions but the elastic response remains continuous and the cross-links remain uniformly distributed through the simulation box. The entanglement-free diamond networks on the other hand show discontinuities in their stress-strain data. Networks at higher densities exhibit a more stable ordered phase and show an unusual staircaselike stress-strain curve. This is the result of a stepwise extension mechanism in which the chains form ordered domains that exclude the cross-links. Extension is achieved by increasing the number of these ordered domains in the strain direction. Cross-links aggregate in the spaces between these ordered domains and form periodic bands. Each vertical upturn in the stress-strain data corresponds to the existence of an integer number of ordered domains. This stepwise elastic behavior is found to be similar to that exhibited by some tough natural materials.     

Speeding up parallel GROMACS on high-latency networks

We investigate the parallel scaling of the GROMACS molecular dynamics code on Ethernet Beowulf clusters and what prerequisites are necessary for decent scaling even on such clusters with only limited bandwidth and high latency. GROMACS 3.3 scales well on supercomputers like the IBM p690 (Regatta) and on Linux clusters with a special interconnect like Myrinet or Infiniband. Because of the high single-node performance of GROMACS, however, on the widely used Ethernet switched clusters, the scaling typically breaks down when more than two computer nodes are involved, limiting the absolute speedup that can be gained to about 3 relative to a single-CPU run. With the LAM MPI implementation, the main scaling bottleneck is here identified to be the all-to-all communication which is required every time step. During such an all-to-all communication step, a huge amount of messages floods the network, and as a result many TCP packets are lost. We show that Ethernet flow control prevents network congestion and leads to substantial scaling improvements. For 16 CPUs, e.g., a speedup of 11 has been achieved. However, for more nodes this mechanism also fails. Having optimized an all-to-all routine, which sends the data in an ordered fashion, we show that it is possible to completely prevent packet loss for any number of multi-CPU nodes. Thus, the GROMACS scaling dramatically improves, even for switches that lack flow control. In addition, for the common HP ProCurve 2848 switch we find that for optimum all-to-all performance it is essential how the nodes are connected to the switch's ports. This is also demonstrated for the example of the Car-Parinello MD code.