Stability testing in an integrated scheme

ISO Guide 35 deals with RM stability issues and scrutinizes the evaluation of stability testing results under the assumption that either there is no trend at all (a rather rare situation), or any observed deterministic change is insignificant and thus can be neglected. However, market demands for reliable reference materials are obviously not limited to stable or at least seemingly stable materials. In many analytical applications, analytes and measurands under consideration are known, or at least suspected, to be unstable on time scales that may vary widely from measurand to measurand. The Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) has developed (and successfully uses) an integrated approach in its certification practice. The approach is based on an initial stability study and subsequent post-certification monitoring. Data evaluation is model-based and takes advantage of all information collected in the stability testing scheme(s). It thus allows one to deal with any kind of instability observed, to assess limiting time intervals at any stress condition in the range tested, to estimate a final expiry date for materials with detected instabilities or the maximum admissible re-testing interval for seemingly stable materials, and to assess maximum admissible stress loads during delivery of the material to the customer. The article describes (and exemplifies) typical study layout, the model selection, and the integrated data assessment.     

Advantages of NIR radiation use for optical determination of skin horny layer thickness with embedded TiO2 nanoparticles during tape stripping procedure

The tape stripping technique is an experimental method frequently used for reconstruction of the in-depth distribution of various topically administered substances within the horny layer of human skin, e.g., compounds contained in sunscreens. Titanium dioxide (TiO₂) nanoparticles (25–200 nm in diameter) are one such compound. Optical techniques which apply blue light are found to be suitable for reconstruction. However, the presence of particles affects the light propagation within the skin and therefore causes incorrect determination of strip thickness, leading to an improper reconstructed distribution of nanoparticle concentration revealed from the experimental data. This study evaluates the errors emerging from the use of blue (400 nm) and NIR (800 nm) radiation and finds the use of longer wavelength light more advantageous. Particles of different diameters are considered, and it is revealed that the application of small particles (25–60 nm) results in the lowest rate of error.     

Conformal fields,restriction properties,degenerate representations and SLEChamps conformes,propriété de restriction,représentations dégénérées et SLE

We relate the Schramm–Loewner Evolution processes (SLE) to highest-weight representations of the Virasoro Algebra. The restriction properties of SLE that have been recently derived in [19] play a crucial role. In this setup, various considerations from conformal field theory can be interpreted and reformulated via SLE. This enables one to make a concrete link between the two-dimensional discrete critical systems from statistical physics and conformal field theory. To cite this article: R. Friedrich, W. Werner, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 335 (2002) 947–952.     

Operations in A-theory

A construction for Segal operations for K-theory of categories with cofibrations, weak equivalences and a biexact pairing is given and coherence properties of the operations are studied. The model for K-theory, which is used, allows coherence to be studied by means of (symmetric) monoidal functors. In the case of Waldhausen A-theory it is shown how to recover the operations used in Waldhausen (Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 967, Springer, Berlin, 1982, pp. 390-409) for the A-theory Kahn-Priddy theorem. The total Segal operation for A-theory, which assembles exterior power operations, is shown to carry a natural infinite loop map structure. The basic input is the un-delooped model for K-theory, which has been developed from a construction by Grayson and Gillet for exact categories in Gunnarsson et al. (J. Pure Appl. Algebra 79 (1992) 255), and Grayson's setup for operations in Grayson (K-theory (1989) 247). The relevant material from these sources is recollected followed by observations on equivariant objects and pairings. Grayson's conditions are then translated to the context of categories with cofibrations and weak equivalences. The power operations are shown to be well behaved w.r.t. suspension and are extended to algebraic K-theory of spaces. Staying close with the philosophy of Waldhausen (1982) Waldhausen's maps are found. The Kahn-Priddy theorem follows from splitting the “free part” off the equivariant theory. The treatment of coherence of the total operation in A-theory involves results from Laplaza (Lecture Notes in Mathematics, Vol. 281, Springer, Berlin, 1972, pp. 29-65) and restriction to spherical objects in the source of the operation.