Dosimetric and spectroradiometric investigations of glass filtered solar UV

The aims of this paper were to investigate how glass-filtered UV irradiances vary with glass thickness, lamination of the glass and the effect of solar zenith angle (SZA), and to measure the glass-filtered UV exposures to different receiving planes with a newly developed UVA dosimeter. Spectroradiometric and dosimetric techniques were employed in the experimental approach. The percentage of the glass-filtered solar UV compared to the unfiltered UV ranged from 59% to 70% and was influenced to a small extent by the glass thickness and the SZA. The laminated glass transmitted 11 to 12% and the windscreen glass transmitted 2.5-2.6%. The influence of the SZA was less for the thicker glass than it was for the thinner glass. The change in transmission was less than 14% for the SZA between 48 degrees and 71 degrees. There was negligible influence due to the SZA on the glass-transmitted UV of the laminated and windscreen glass. The influence of the glass thickness in the range of 2-6 mm on the percentage transmission was less than 16%. The influences of the glass thickness and the SZA on the glass-transmitted UV have been incorporated in the use of a UVA dosimeter for the glass-transmitted UV exposures. The UVA dosimeter was employed in the field to measure the glass-filtered UV exposures to different receiving planes. The UVA dosimeter reported has the potential for personal solar UVA exposure measurements.     

Evaluation of a high exposure solar UV dosimeter for underwater use

Solar ultraviolet radiation (UV) is known to have a significant effect upon the marine ecosystem. This has been documented by many previous studies using a variety of measurement methods in aquatic environments such as oceans, streams and lakes. Evidence gathered from these investigations has shown that UVB radiation (280-320 nm) can negatively affect numerous aquatic life forms, while UVA radiation (320-400 nm) can both damage and possibly even repair certain types of underwater life. Chemical dosimeters such as polysulphone have been tested to record underwater UV exposures and in turn quantify the relationship between water column depth and dissolved organic carbon levels to the distribution of biologically damaging UV underwater. However, these studies have only been able to intercept UV exposures over relatively short time intervals. This paper reports on the evaluation of a high exposure UV dosimeter for underwater use. The UV dosimeter was fabricated from poly 2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide (PPO) film. This paper presents the dose response, cosine response, exposure additivity and watermarking effect relating to the PPO dosimeter as measured in a controlled underwater environment and will also detail the overnight dark reaction and UVA and visible radiation response of the PPO dosimeter, which can be used for error correction to improve the reliability of the UV data measured by the PPO dosimeters. These results show that this dosimeter has the potential for long-term underwater UV exposure measurements.     

Minimum Exposure Limits and Measured Relationships Between the Vitamin D,Erythema and International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection Solar Ultraviolet

The International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has established guidelines for exposure to ultraviolet radiation in outdoor occupational settings. Spectrally weighted ICNIRP ultraviolet exposures received by the skin or eye in an 8 h period are limited to 30 J m^?2. In this study, the time required to reach the ICNIRP exposure limit was measured daily in 10 min intervals upon a horizontal plane at a subtropical Australian latitude over a full year and compared with the effective Vitamin D dose received to one‐quarter of the available skin surface area for all six Fitzpatrick skin types. The comparison of measured solar ultraviolet exposures for the full range of sky conditions in the 2009 measurement period, including a major September continental dust event, show a clear relationship between the weighted ICNIRP and the effective vitamin D dose. Our results show that the horizontal plane ICNIRP ultraviolet exposure may be used under these conditions to provide minimum guidelines for the healthy moderation of vitamin D, scalable to each of the six Fitzpatrick skin types.     

A transversely isotropic composite with a statistical distribution of spheroidal inclusions: a geometrical approach to overall properties

In the literature, the determination of global elastic properties of composites with ellipsoidal inclusions is based on the averaged stress, strain and elastic-energy fields (e.g. Compos. Sci. Technol. 27 (1986) 111). These are related to the local fields of the inclusion, the matrix, and the inclusion-matrix interface. In this study, we propose a method to obtain the global elastic properties of any transversely isotropic composite directly from the elastic properties of the matrix and the inclusions. Thus, it is not necessary to refer to the stress and strain applied globally or generated locally. The inclusions can have any transversely isotropic probability distribution of orientation. The problem is entirely geometrized and is treated in terms of averages of Walpole's (Adv. Appl. Mech. 21 (1981) 169) components of the fourth-order tensors describing the problem. We give a general numerical solution for any transversely isotropic statistical distribution of orientation, and also provide a validation of our method by applying it to some known cases and by retrieving the known exact solutions from the literature.     

A semi-analytical solution for the confined compression of hydrated soft tissue

Confined compression is a common experimental technique aimed at gaining information on the properties of biphasic mixtures comprised of a solid saturated by a fluid, a typical example of which are soft hydrated biological tissues. When the material properties (elastic modulus, permeability) are assumed to be homogeneous, the governing equation in the axial displacement reduces to a Fourier equation which can be solved analytically. For the more realistic case of inhomogeneous material properties, the governing equation does not admit, in general, a solution in closed form. In this work, we propose a semi-analytical alternative to Finite Element analysis for the study of the confined compression of linearly elastic biphasic mixtures. The partial differential equation is discretised in the space variable and kept continuous in the time variable, by use of the Finite Difference Method, and the resulting system of ordinary differential equations is solved by means of the Laplace Transform method.     

Protons and carbon ions acceleration in the target-normal-sheath-acceleration regime using low-contrast fs laser and metal-graphene targets

fs pulsed lasers at an intensity of the order of 10¹⁸ W/cm², with a contrast of 10⁻⁵, were employed to irradiate thin foils to study the target-normal-sheath-acceleration (TNSA) regime. The forward ion acceleration was investigated using 1/11 µm thickness foils composed of a metallic sheet on which a thin reduced graphene oxide film with 10 nm thickness was deposited by single or both faces. The forward-accelerated ions were detected using SiC semiconductors connected in time-of-flight configuration. The use of intense and long pre-pulse generating the low contrast does not permit to accelerate protons above 1 MeV because it produces a pre-plasma destroying the foil, and the successive main laser pulse interacts with the expanding plasma and not with the overdense solid surface. Experimental results demonstrated that the maximum proton energies of about 700 keV and of 4.2 MeV carbon ions and higher were obtained under the condition of the optimal acceleration procedure. The measurements of ion energy and charge states confirm that the acceleration per charge state is measurable from the proton energy, confirming the Coulomb–Boltzmann-shifted theoretical model. However, heavy ions cannot be accelerated due to their mass and low velocity, which does not permit them to be subjected to the fast and high developed electric field driving the light-ion acceleration. The ion acceleration can be optimized based on the laser focal positioning and on the foil thickness, composition, and structure, as it will be presented and discussed.     

Interface control domain decomposition methods for heterogeneous problems

This paper is concerned with the solution of heterogeneous problems by the interface control domain decomposition (ICDD) method, a strategy introduced for the solution of partial differential equations in computational domains partitioned into subdomains that overlap. After reformulating the original boundary value problem by introducing new additional control variables, the unknown traces of the solution at internal subdomain interfaces; the latter are determined by requiring that the (a priori) independent solutions in each subdomain undergo the minimization of a suitable cost functional. We provide an abstract formulation for coupled heterogeneous problems and a general theorem of well‐posedness for the associated ICDD problem. Then, we illustrate and validate an efficient algorithm based on the solution of the Schur‐complement system restricted solely to the interface control variables by considering two kinds of heterogeneous boundary value problems: the coupling between pure advection and advection–diffusion equations and the coupling between Stokes and Darcy equations. In the latter case, we also compare the ICDD method with a classical approach based on the Beavers–Joseph–Saffman conditions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of novel 2H-spiro[1-benzofuran-3,4′-piperidin]ol scaffolds

With the aim to enrich our ‘privileged structure’-based library, novel 2H-spiro[1-benzofuran-3,4′-piperidin]ol scaffolds were prepared. The method involved a key intramolecular Heck cyclization which was successfully applied for three series of compounds. The desired scaffolds were obtained in overall yields of 42–53%.