Speckles in laser Doppler perfusion imaging

We report on the quantitative influence of speckles in laser Doppler perfusion imaging. The influence of speckles on the signal amplitude and on the Doppler spectrum is demonstrated experimentally for particle suspensions with different scattering levels and various beam widths. It is shown that the type of tissue affects the instrumental response through the effect of lateral light diffusion on the number of speckles involved in the detection process. These effects are largest for narrow beams.     

A Study of Two-Dimensional Plane Elasticity Finite Elements for Optimal Design

ABSTRACT

Design of structures using a variety of two-dimensional finite elements is considered in this paper. An efficient technique of computing first-order derivatives of pointwise stress constraints for simple and higher-order two-dimensional (membrane) finite elements is presented. Computational aspects of design sensitivity vector calculation, using a semi-analytical method versus traditional methods are presented. Implementation of a fully-stressed design approach to find a suitable initial estimate leads to increased computational efficiency. These aspects of the design procedure are illustrated through analysis of numerical examples. Experience indicates that a suitable mix of low and higher-order elements yields the most efficient and accurate design model.     

Envisaging quantum transport phenomenon in a muddled base pair of DNA

The effect of muddled base pair on electron transfer through a deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule connected to the gold electrodes has been elucidated using tight binding model. The effect of hydrogen and nitrogen bonds on the resistance of the base pair has been minutely observed. Using the semiempirical extended Huckel approach within NEGF regime, we have determined the current and conductance vs. bias voltage for disordered base pairs of DNA made of thymine (T) and adenine (A). The asymmetrical behaviour amid five times depreciation in the current characteristics has been observed for deviated Au–AT base pair–Au devices. An interesting revelation is that the conductance of the intrinsic AT base pair configuration attains dramatically high values with the symmetrical zig-zag pattern of current, which clearly indicates the transformation of the bond length within the strands of base pair when compared with other samples. A thorough investigation of the transmission coefficients T(E) and HOMO–LUMO gap reveals the misalignment of the strands in base pairs of DNA. The observed results present an insight to extend this work to build biosensing devices to predict the abnormality with the DNA.     

Synthesis,structural and optical properties of well dispersed anatase TiO2 nanoparticles by non‐hydrothermal method

The formation of nanocrystalline TiO₂ particles has been investigated via a surfactant‐free synthetic non‐hydrothermal method. Titanium isopropoxide and toluene were used as the starting materials. At a low temperature of 250 °C for 6 h, the reaction mixture turned in to a white precipitate (TiO₂) as a result of the thermal decomposition of metal alkoxide. The obtained product was found to crystallize purely in the anatase phase with well defined morphology. The powder XRD study confirms that the average size of the particle is close to ∼15 nm. The TEM analysis indicates the sizes of the primary and secondary particles in the range between 8‐10 nm and 15‐20 nm respectively. The quantum size confinement of the crystallites is evident from the blue shift of the absorption edge in the UV‐Visible absorption spectrum. The luminescence property of the TiO₂ nanoparticles studied by the emission spectrum confirms the presence of defect levels caused by the oxygen vacancies. (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Nonlinear tunneling of optical soliton in 3 coupled NLS equation with symbolic computation

We investigated the soliton solution for N$N$ coupled nonlinear Schrödinger (CNLS) equations. These equations are coupled due to the cross-phase-modulation (CPM). Lax pair of this system is obtained via the Ablowitz–Kaup–Newell–Segur (AKNS) scheme and the corresponding Darboux transformation is constructed to derive the soliton solution. One and two soliton solutions are generated. Using two soliton solutions of 3 CNLS equation, nonlinear tunneling of soliton for both with and without exponential background has been discussed. Finally cascade compression of optical soliton through multi-nonlinear barrier has been discussed. The obtained results may have promising applications in all-optical devices based on optical solitons, study of soliton propagation in birefringence fiber systems and optical soliton with distributed dispersion and nonlinearity management.     

Nucleation kinetics,growth and hardness parameters of l-alanine alaninium picrate (LAAP) single crystals

Amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins and are gaining importance due to their interesting optical behavior. l-alanine is an amino acid which dissolves in water and it can react with other acids to form new compounds. In this work, l-alanine is mixed with picric acid to prepare l-alanine alaninium picrate (LAAP) salt. Solubility and metastable zone width were measured for LAAP salt and induction period was measured at different supersaturation ratios. The critical nucleation parameters were evaluated based on the classical theory of homogeneous nucleation. Using the optimized nucleation parameters, single crystals of LAAP salt were grown by slow evaporation technique. XRD and FTIR studies were carried out to understand structural and molecular formation of the crystal. Microhardness measurements were performed on the grown LAAP crystal and various parameters such as work hardening constant, stiffness constant, yield strength, resistance pressure and corrected hardness were evaluated. Nonlinear optical behavior of the sample was analyzed.     

Nonlocal maximum likelihood estimation method for denoising multiple-coil magnetic resonance images

Effective denoising is vital for proper analysis and accurate quantitative measurements from magnetic resonance (MR) images. Even though many methods were proposed to denoise MR images, only few deal with the estimation of true signal from MR images acquired with phased-array coils. If the magnitude data from phased array coils are reconstructed as the root sum of squares, in the absence of noise correlations and subsampling, the data is assumed to follow a non central-χ distribution. However, when the k-space is subsampled to increase the acquisition speed (as in GRAPPA like methods), noise becomes spatially varying. In this note, we propose a method to denoise multiple-coil acquired MR images. Both the non central-χ distribution and the spatially varying nature of the noise is taken into account in the proposed method. Experiments were conducted on both simulated and real data sets to validate and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Crystal growth,optical and thermal studies of nonlinear optical γ-glycine single crystal grown from lithium nitrate

Single crystals of the nonlinear material γ-glycine have been grown in the presence of lithium nitrate by slow-evaporation method. Structural characterization of the grown crystals was carried out by powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods and it is observed that the samples crystallize in hexagonal system with non-centrosymmetric space groups. The modes of vibrations of different molecular groups present in glycine have been identified by spectral analyses. UV–visible transmittance study was performed to analyze optical transparency of γ-glycine crystals and found that the crystal was transparent in the entire visible-NIR region. Second harmonic generation (SHG) conversion efficiency has been estimated as 62 mV and the output power by the crystal was 1.72 times that of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystal. The thermal stability and decomposition of the sample have been studied by thermal analysis and it is observed that the γ-glycine crystal have good thermal stability.     

Growth,spectral, and thermal characterization of the NLO crystal: semicarbazone of <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">dl</Emphasis>-camphor (SDLC)

Semicarbazone of dl-camphor (SdlC) crystals were grown using methanol as a solvent by slow evaporation solution growth technique at room temperature. Formation of the product and the presence of various functional groups present in the grown crystal have been identified using FTIR spectra. Single crystal XRD study was conducted to obtain the crystal structure and lattice parameters. The grown crystal was subjected to ¹HNMR and ¹³CNMR spectral studies and TG-DTA in order to confirm its structure, purity, and stability, respectively. The optical transparency of the crystal was tested using UV–Vis–NIR spectroscopy. The nonlinear optical (NLO) property of the grown crystal was confirmed from the second harmonic generation (SHG) by Kurtz–Perry powder test.     

De novo synthesis of L-colitose and L-rhodinose building blocks

A divergent, practical, and efficient de novo synthesis of fully functionalized L-colitose (3,6-dideoxy-L-galactose), 2-epi-colitose (3,6-dideoxy-L-talose), and L-rhodinose (2,3,6-trideoxy-L-galactose) building blocks has been achieved using inexpensive, commercially available (S)-ethyl lactate as the starting material. The routes center around a diastereoselective Cram-chelated allylation that provides a common homoallylic alcohol intermediate. Oxidation of this common intermediate finally resulted in the synthesis of the three monosaccharide building blocks.