Target training with soft computing tools

The personal capabilities and intentions of employees indicate their performance within their organization. It is important for the organization to capture this kind of tacit knowledge since the workforce are the true experts in perceiving the organization's current reality and evaluating which assets require development – including themselves as knowledge assets. The collective inner voice of the workforce helps the organization's management to steer the company and its assets in a sustainable direction.This article presents how the collective inner voice of the workforce can be captured and how it can be used for the benefit of the organization and its employees. The objective is to support individuals’ personal aspirations, as well as to save the money, time and resources that an organization spends on personnel training.The focus of this article is on demonstrating a possible soft-computing method used for competency simulation. The process starts with a linguistic self-evaluation conducted by employees, where individuals’ own perception of current and target competence levels is captured. The self-evaluation is conducted with the help of fuzzy logic. Clusters are formed from the result dataset using an unsupervised neural network clustering method: self-organizing maps. A demonstrator tool is then used to perform a “what-if” type of analysis/simulation on the clusters in the results. With the demonstrator tool, employees can roughly test the impact of alternative training scenarios for themselves. For individuals this may open up new directions for self-development, and for organizations this may allow the efficient use of training resources. We tested the approach with a dataset from a real human resource development project among nuclear power plant operators.The case study reveals the potential of soft-computing based collective competency simulation as one part of personnel development projects in the future. Yet the techniques and the demonstrator tool used in this experiment are far from being products that employees could easily use as part of their training project. Possible benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated in this article.     

Supersymmetric structures in 4-D Yang–Mills theory

Recently there has been much progress in understanding confinement in the N=2 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory. Here we shall investigate how these results could be extended to explain color confinement in the ordinary Yang–Mills theory. In particular, we inquire whether confinement in the N=2 theory can be related to color confinement in the ordinary Yang–Mills theory in the framework of Parisi–Sourlas dimensional reduction. For this we study the partition function of the ordinary Yang–Mills theory in different regimes. Our analysis reveals that an intimate connection indeed exists between these two approaches. Received: 18 July 1997 / Revised version: 15 August 1997 / Published online: 23 February 1998     

Complexity penalized support estimation

We consider the estimation of the support of a probability density function with iid observations. The estimator to be considered is a minimizer of a complexity penalized excess mass criterion. We present a fast algorithm for the construction of the estimator. The estimator is able to estimate supports which consists of disconnected regions. We will prove that the estimator achieves minimax rates of convergence up to a logarithmic factor simultaneously over a scale of Hölder smoothness classes for the boundary of the support. The proof assumes a sharp boundary for the support.     

Rapid LC-MS detection of cyanobacterial hepatotoxins microcystins and nodularins—Comparison of columns

Eight reversed-phase columns intended for rapid HPLC were assessed for the separation of thirteen microcystins and nodularins, cyclic peptidic hepatotoxins. The instrumentation consisted of an Agilent Technologies 1200 Rapid Resolution high performance liquid chromatography system coupled to a mass spectrometer, Bruker Daltonics Ultra Performance High Capacity Ion Trap MS (HCT Ultra) with electrospray ionisation (RRLC-ESI-IT-MS). The columns tested were 2-2.1 mm × 50 mm in diameter and length, and contained small particles (1.8-2.7 μm), or monolithic silica supports for fast performance. The shortest total run time achieved was 3 min 15 s including equilibration and injection. Critical microcystin pairs were still resolved. Several columns showed excellent performance.     

Expanding excitation wavelengths for azobenzene photoswitching into the near-infrared range via endothermic triplet energy transfer

Developing azobenzene photoswitches capable of selective and efficient photoisomerization by long-wavelength excitation is an enduring challenge. Herein, rapid isomerization from the Z- to E-state of two ortho-functionalized bistable azobenzenes with near-unity photoconversion efficiency was driven by triplet energy transfer upon red and near-infrared (up to 770 nm) excitation of porphyrin photosensitizers in catalytic micromolar concentrations. We show that the process of triplet-sensitized isomerization is efficient even when the sensitizer triplet energy is substantially lower (>200 meV) than that of the azobenzene used. This makes the approach applicable for a wide variety of sensitizer-azobenzene combinations and enables the expansion of excitation wavelengths into the near-infrared spectral range. Therefore, indirect excitation via endothermic triplet energy transfer provides efficient and precise means for photoswitching upon 770 nm near-infared light illumination with no chemical modification of the azobenzene chromophore, a desirable feature in photocontrollable biomaterials.

Triplet energy transfer enables efficient Z-to-E photoswitching of azobenzenes even with near-infrared light. Ultrafast intersystem crossing of azobenzene makes the process entropy-driven and enables the use of endothermic sensitizer-azobenzene pairs.     

Electronic spectroscopy of I(2)-Xe complexes in solid Krypton

In the present work, we have studied ion-pair states of matrix-isolated I(2) with vacuum-UV absorption and UV-vis-NIR emission, where the matrix environment is systematically changed by mixing Kr with Xe, from pure Kr to a more polarizable Xe host. Particular emphasis is put on low doping levels of Xe that yield a binary complex I(2)-Xe, as verified by coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) measurements. Associated with interaction of I(2) with Xe we can observe strong new absorption in vacuum-UV, redshifted 2400 cm(-1) from the X → D transition of I(2). Observed redshift can be explained by symmetry breaking of ion-pair states within the I(2)-Xe complex. Systematic Xe doping of Kr matrices shows that at low doping levels, positions of I(2) ion-pair emissions are not significantly affected by complexation with Xe, but simultaneous increase of emissions from doubly spin-excited states indicates non-radiative relaxation to valence states. At intermediate doping levels ion-pair emissions shift systematically to red due to change in the average polarizability of the environment. We have conducted spectrally resolved ultrafast pump-probe ion-pair emission studies with pure and Xe doped Kr matrices, in order to reveal the influence of Xe to I(2) dynamics in solid Kr. Strikingly, relaxed emission from the ion-pair states shows no indication of complex presence. It further indicates that the complex escapes detection due to a non-radiative relaxation.     

On finite rank perturbations of definitizable operators

It was shown by P. Jonas and H. Langer that a selfadjoint definitizable operator A in a Krein space remains definitizable after a finite rank perturbation in resolvent sense if the perturbed operator B is selfadjoint and the resolvent set ρ(B) is nonempty. It is the aim of this note to prove a more general variant of this perturbation result where the assumption on ρ(B) is dropped. As an application a class of singular ordinary differential operators with indefinite weight functions is studied.     

Selfadjoint Schrödinger operators on the half-space with compactly supported Robin boundary conditions

Schrödinger differential operators on a half-space with compactly supported Robin boundary conditions are studied. (© 2011 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)