Sunbed radiation provokes cutaneous vitamin D synthesis in humans--a randomized controlled trial

We wanted to investigate whether the use of sunbeds with sunlamps emitting mainly UVA and only 0.5% or 1.4% UVB will increase the level of serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D). In a randomized, controlled, open study on healthy, Caucasian females (> 50 years) sunbed radiation was given as follows: four 6-min sunbed sessions (days 0, 2, 4 and 7) and four 12-min sunbed sessions (days 9, 11, 14 and 16 ) with sunlamps emitting 0.5% UVB (n = 20) or with sunlamps emitting 1.4% UVB (n = 15). The controls (n = 21) had no intervention. Serum levels of 25(OH)D were measured on days 0, 9 and 18 in all three groups. The average increase in serum 25(OH)D from day 0 to day 9 was 12 nmol L(-1) (SD 11 nmol L(-1), P = 0.0002) in the 0.5% UVB group and 27 nmol L(-1) (SD 9 nmol L(-1), P < 0.0001) in the 1.4% UVB group. From day 9 to day 18 a further but not significant increase in serum 25(OH)D of 3 nmol L(-1) (SD 9 nmol L(-1), P = 0.2) in the 0.5% UVB group and 0.6 nmol L(-1) (SD 18 nmol L(-1), P = 0.9) in the 1.4% UVB group was seen. No significant changes were found in the control group. Increasing with UVB dose and exposure time, 37-64% of the sunbed sessions resulted in side effects such as erythema or polymorphic light eruption. The results showed that sunbeds emitting 0.5% and 1.4% UVB increased 25(OH)D serum levels. The increases were dose dependent but reached a plateau after few sessions. Sunbed use as vitamin D source is, however, not generally recommendable due to the well-known carcinogenicity and high frequency of acute side effects.     

Anisotropy in the anodic oxidation of silicon in KOH solution

The electrochemical oxidation and passivation of Si(100) and Si(111) electrodes in KOH solution was studied by potentiodynamic and potential-step measurements. Striking differences were observed between the surfaces. A comparison of the results for n- and p-type electrodes led us to conclude that electrochemical oxidation of silicon in alkaline solution must be triggered by a chemical reaction. The strong influence of temperature on the current-potential and current-time results of (111) surfaces supports the importance of chemical activation. Photocurrent experiments on n-type (111) electrodes show that oxide nucleation is important for growth of the passive layer. A mechanism combining surface chemistry and electrochemistry is proposed to account for the pronounced anisotropy in anodic oxidation.     

Nonlinear Instability of the Two-Dimensional Striation Model About Smooth Steady States

The two-dimensional striation model consists of a nonlinear system of PDE's which arises in the modeling of the ionospheric plasma. The local-in-time existence of strong solutions is first proved using Banach's fixed point theorem. Then, under physically relevant assumptions, the system is shown to be nonlinearly unstable as soon as it is linearly unstable. Moreover, the instability occurs before the possible blow-up time of the solution. The proof relies on an earlier work of Hwang and Guo (2003 Hwang , H. J. , Guo , Y. ( 2003 ). On the dynamical Rayleigh–Taylor instability . Arch. of Rat. Mech. Anal. 167 : 235 – 253 .[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The first step of the proof is to investigate under which conditions the linearized system is unstable and to prove that its spectrum is bounded, by means of a variational formulation. The second one consists in constructing a family of solutions depending on the parameter δ measuring the smallness of the perturbation to the steady-state. Thanks to the boundedness of the linearized spectrum, this family of solutions is shown to be unstable by means of a power series expansion in δ.     

The Becke Fuzzy Cells Integration Scheme in the Amsterdam Density Functional Program Suite

In this article, we document a new implementation of the fuzzy cells scheme for numerical integration in polyatomic systems [Becke, J. Chem. Phys. 1998, 88, 2547] and compare its efficiency and accuracy with respect to an integration scheme based on the Voronoi space partitioning. We show that the accuracy of both methods is comparable, but that the fuzzy cells scheme is better suited for geometry optimization. For this method, we also introduce the locally dense grid concept and present a proof‐of‐concept application. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Static potentials for quarkonia at finite temperatures

We review non-perturbative static potentials commonly used in potential models for quarkonia at finite T. Potentials derived from Polyakov loop correlators are shown to be inappropriate for this purpose. The free energy is physical but has the wrong spatial decay and perturbative limit. The so-called singlet free energy is gauge dependent and unphysical. An appropriate static real time potential can be defined through a generalisation of pNRQCD to finite T. In perturbation theory, its real part reproduces the Debye-screened potential, its imaginary part accounts for Landau damping. Possibilities for its non-perturbative evaluation are discussed.     

Modeling,Analysis, and Simulation of Biofilm Formation and Decay

In this article, we give a brief overview of our recent work on continuum mechanical modelling and simulation of microbial films. This comprises some classical tasks of applied mathematics such as computational fluid dynamics, analysis of partial differential equations, and mathematical biology.