An inverse spectral problem

In this article an infinite periodic Jacobi matrix is under consideration. It is shown that the spectrum of the matrix consists of a single finite interval if and only if the period of the matrix is equal to unity.     

High performance liquid chromatographic analysis of six conjugated and unconjugated estrogens in serum.

Six estrogens-estrone, equilin, estradiol, sodium estrone sulphate, sodium equilin sulphate and sodium 17-alpha-dihydroequilin sulphate in dog serum were successfully separated and quantified by a high performance liquid chromatographic method developed in our laboratories. The mobile phase was optimized by studying the effects of an organic modifier (acetonitrile) and an ion pairing reagent (tetrabutylammonium hydroxide). The serum sample work-up procedure was designed to recover both conjugated and unconjugated estrogens. The optimum method involved acetonitrile to precipitate serum proteins/peptides and extract estrogens. Residues were reconstituted in 50% acetonitrile in water for injection. The detection limits for these six estrogens via UV detection ranged from 0.5 to 5 ng on-column with a signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of 10 for a 20 microL injection and via fluorescence 0.1 ng on-column for 17-beta-estradiol. Validation data are included for all six estrogens.     

Improving artificial bee colony with one-position inheritance mechanism

Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm simulates the foraging behavior of honey bees. It shows good performance in many application problems and large scale optimization problems. However, variation of a solution in the ABC algorithm is only employed on one dimension of the solution. This would sometimes hamper the convergence speed of the ABC algorithm, especially for large scale optimization. This paper proposes a one-position inheritance (OPI) mechanism to overcome this drawback. The OPI mechanism aims to promote information exchange amongst employed bees of the ABC algorithm. For separable function, OPIABC has a higher probability resulting in function value improvement of the worst positions than ABC. Through one-position information exchange, the OPI mechanism can assist the ABC algorithm to find promising solutions. This mechanism has been tested on a set of 25 test functions with $D= 30$ and on CEC 2008 test suite with $D= 100$ and 1,000. Experimental results show that the OPI mechanism can speed up the convergence of the ABC algorithm. After the use of OPI, the performance of the ABC algorithm is significantly improved for both rotated problems and large scale problems. OPIABC is also competitive on both test suites comparing with other recently proposed swarm intelligence metaheuristics (e.g. SaDE and PSO2011). Furthermore, the OPI mechanism can greatly enhance the performance of other improved ABC algorithms.     

Cyclic bandwidth with an edge added

B_c(G) denotes the cyclic bandwidth of graph G. In this paper, we obtain the maximum cyclic bandwidth of graphs of order p with adding an edge as follows:

     

Zn2+@Polyvinylpyrrolidone and Urushiol Preparation of Nanofibrous Membranes and Their Synergistic Effect

In this study, lacquer is gathered from a lacquer tree and rotary evaporation is used to remove impurities to obtain urushiol. Next, 10 mL of anhydrous ethanol serves as the solvent for blending polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) at a specified content (0.7 g and 0.2–0.7 g urushiol) to form an electrospinning solution. Electrospinning is carried out with a voltage of 18 kV to prepare PVP/urushiol nanofibrous membranes. At a ratio of 7/4, the PVP/urushiol nanofibrous membranes are not eroded in 98% sulfuric acid and these membranes also demonstrate a 50–60% antibacterial effect against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. Moreover, the antibacterial effect can be boosted to 98% with the incorporation of zinc ions. The results indicate that anhydrous ethanol can remove the sensitization of urushiol from PVP/urushiol membranes. Furthermore, animal test results indicate that when rats are in contact with PVP/urushiol anhydrous ethanol for 48 h, their skins are free from dark brown skin allergy. The presence of PVP eliminates the sensitization of urushiol, and the nanofibrous membranes demonstrate low toxicity. Hence, urushiol is the only natural material that enables PVP to withstand 98% sulfuric acid as well as acquire hydrolyzability, thereby qualify PVP as a medical material.     

Accelerated direct electrochemistry of hemoglobin based on hemoglobin-carbon nanotube (Hb-CNT) assembly

In this study, we have demonstrated that hemoglobin can be coupled to acid-treated multiwall carbon nanotubes in the presence of 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) and assembled as hemoglobin-carbon nanotube (Hb-CNT) composites. Our observations of the electrochemical studies demonstrate that the electrochemical response of Hb-CNT assembled in the presence of EDC is much higher than that in the absence of EDC. It is evident that the direct electron transfer of hemoglobin could be effectively accelerated in the Hb-CNT assembly by using EDC on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE), and the relative electron transfer rate constant K(s) is found to be 1.02+/-0.05 s(-1). The results of our studies illustrate that the assembly of hemoglobin-multiwall carbon nanotubes using EDC could provide a novel strategy to effectively facilitate the direct electrochemistry of heme-containing proteins, which could be further utilized as a promising biosensor for some specific biological substrate and related biological process.     

Selective Determination of Vitamin B2 at Electrochemically Activated Glassy Carbon Electrode

Electrochemically activated glassy carbon electrodes were applied to the preconcentration and electroanalysis of Vitamin B₂ (VB₂) in multivitamin preparation. Voltammetric peak currents showed linear response for VB₂ concentrations in the range between 0.1 to 3.0 M with a large slope of 12.2 AM^-1 and a correlation coefficient of 0.996. The reproducibility of the voltammetric measurements was usually less than 7% RSD for five replicate measurements. Common vitamin and metal species did not interfere the determination.     

A novel electrochemical approach for fabrication of photoluminescent erbium-doped porous silicon

21 /cm³. After this new ECD treatment, PS:Er was found to emit much more intense room-temperature visible photoluminescence than both the porous silicon control and the PS:Er prepared by constant-current ECD. Room-temperature IR photoluminescence around 1.54 μm was observed for the first time without any post-doping annealing. Received: 3 September 1998/Accepted: 9 September 1998     

以(真空紫外光+紫外光)-共振加强式多光子游离法侦测交叉分子束之甲基生成物

用 (真空紫外光 +紫外光 ) 共振加强式多光子游离法侦测甲基自由基 .为证明此法之灵敏度 ,实验用交叉分子束反应F +CH4 (CD4 )→HF(DF) +CH3(CD3) ,其绝对灵敏度可达 10 7/cm3.由所得之光谱 ,更精确地得到两个里德堡态 3d2 E″及 3d2 A1′之光谱系数     

Massive transfer of vertically aligned Si nanowire array onto alien substrates and their characteristics

Si nanowires (NWs) are promising materials for future electronic, photovoltaic, and sensor applications. So far the Si NWs are mainly formed on particular substrates or at high temperatures, greatly limiting their application flexibility. Here we report a low temperature process for forming and massively transferring vertically aligned Si NWs on alien substrates with a large density of about (3-5) × 10⁷ NWs/mm². The X-ray diffraction spectrum reveals that the transferred NWs exhibit almost the same crystal property as the bulk Si. Our investigation further shows that the transferred NWs have exceptional optical characteristics. The transferred Si NWs of 12.14 μm exhibit the transmittance as low as 0.3% in the near infrared region and 0.07% in the visible region. The extracted absorption coefficient of Si NWs in the near infrared region is about 3 × 10³ cm⁻¹, over 30 times larger than that of the bulk Si. Because of the low temperature process, it enables a large variety of alien substrates such as glass and plastics to be used. In addition, the exceptional properties of the transferred NWs offer potential applications for photovoltaic, photo-detectors, sensors, and flexible electronics.