Facet reflectivity in the presence of a diffracting corner

Results and new theory are presented for the uncoated and coated facet reflectivity of a shallowly buried waveguide, taking account of the diffracting corner present at the air–semiconductor interface. The corner effects are shown to be most significant in the case of coated facets. The analysis also predicts the asymmetry introduced into the radiation pattern.     

Optical behavior of antibiofouling additives in environment‐friendly coverglass materials for bio‐sensors and solar panels

Solar panels and bio‐optical sensors play a significant and growing role in a number of applications that are of importance to many organizations. Many of these instruments require a high transmission of radiation into the device for it to work properly. A major issue faced is that harsh marine environments often aid in the growth or development of fouling on the coverglass used to protect the instruments. Over a period of time in an ocean environment, some plant or animal may attach itself to the coverglass, ultimately obscuring the glass and rendering the instrument useless. As such, an antifouling mechanism is needed for these instruments that is inexpensive, long‐lasting, and environment friendly. The approach discussed herein involves the use of known antifouling chemicals which have been incorporated into the polymer matrix. Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), bisphenol A polycarbonate (Bis A PC), and a co‐polyterephthalate (CPTE) were examined. The plaques are optically transparent and previous work has shown that, for most samples, the materials display a minimal decrease in mechanical behavior upon the addition of the algaecides. This paper will discuss the effects on the materials' optical properties when exposed to both harsh marine conditions as well as high intensity UV light. Specifically, the decrease in transmission of visible light was examined over a 6 month period of time. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gold(I) and Silver(I) Complexes with Thioether Functionalized Silylamido Ligands

The thioether functionalized aminosilanes Me₂Si(NH‐C₆H₄‐2‐SR)₂ (R = Ph, Me) were lithiated with nBuLi and subsequently reacted with AgCl in the presence of PMe₃ or with [AuCl(PMe₃)]. In the case of Me₂Si(NH‐C₆H₄‐2‐SPh)₂ the dinuclear complexes [M₂{Me₂Si(NC₆H₄‐2‐SPh)₂}(PMe₃)₂] (M = Ag; Au) were isolated. The analogous reactions starting from Me₂Si(NH‐C₆H₄‐SMe)₂ afforded the dinuclear gold complex [Au₂{Me₂Si(NC₆H₄‐2‐SMe)₂}(PMe₃)₂] and the tetranuclear silver complex [Ag₄{Me₂Si(NC₆H₄‐2‐SMe)₂}₂(PMe₃)₂]. In the dinuclear compounds of the type [M₂{Me₂Si(NC₆H₄‐2‐SR)₂}(PMe₃)₂], each of the silylamide N atoms is connected to a M(PMe₃) group to give a nearly linear N–M–P arrangement with Ag–N and Au–N bonds in the range of 212.0(4)–213.3(4) pm and 205.3(3)–208.1(9) pm, respectively. [Ag₄{Me₂Si(NC₆H₄‐2‐SMe)₂}₂(PMe₃)₂] consists of a central Si₂N₄Ag₂ ring with linearly coordinated Ag atoms (Ag‐N: 223.1(4)–222.1(4) pm) and two peripheral Ag(PMe₃) units, which are connected to the amido N atoms in a chelating mode. The relatively short transannular Ag ··· Ag separation (277.6(1) pm) within the Si₂N₄Ag₂ ring hints for argentophilic interactions. The peripheral Ag atoms are three coordinated with Ag–N distances of 233.9(4)–242.8(4) pm.     

UnyLinker dimer impurity characterization and process improvement

Herein, we describe the isolation and characterization of a UnyLinker dimer which, if left uncontrolled, can become incorporated in oligonucleotide products. The dimer is formed as a result of an unusual intermolecular osmium-catalyzed etherification. We demonstrate that by simply replacing H₂O₂ as the co-oxidant with NMO, none of the UnyLinker dimer impurity is formed.     

Application of <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis><Subscript>0</Subscript>-INAA for the determination of essential and toxic elements in medicinal plants from West Pokot County,Kenya

Rapid determination of gross alpha and beta emitters in urine by liquid scintillation counting is discussed. This method is based on direct addition of urine into scintillation cocktail. ²⁴¹Am, ²³⁹Pu and ⁹⁰Sr were selected as model radionuclides. The LSA Hidex 300 SL equipped with Triple-Double-Coincidence-Ratio technique was used for sample measurement. The work focused on optimizing the LSC cocktail to urine volume ratio with respect to the model radionuclides. The overall efficiencies for ²⁴¹Am, ²³⁹Pu and ⁹⁰Sr were greater than 92 %; therefore, this method would be suitable for rapid determination of gross alpha/beta activity.     

Interior-point methods for nonconvex nonlinear programming: cubic regularization

In this paper, we present a primal-dual interior-point method for solving nonlinear programming problems. It employs a Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) perturbation to the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) matrix to handle indefinite Hessians and a line search to obtain sufficient descent at each iteration. We show that the LM perturbation is equivalent to replacing the Newton step by a cubic regularization step with an appropriately chosen regularization parameter. This equivalence allows us to use the favorable theoretical results of Griewank (The modification of Newton’s method for unconstrained optimization by bounding cubic terms, 1981), Nesterov and Polyak (Math. Program., Ser. A 108:177–205, 2006), Cartis et al. (Math. Program., Ser. A 127:245–295, 2011; Math. Program., Ser. A 130:295–319, 2011), but its application at every iteration of the algorithm, as proposed by these papers, is computationally expensive. We propose a hybrid method: use a Newton direction with a line search on iterations with positive definite Hessians and a cubic step, found using a sufficiently large LM perturbation to guarantee a steplength of 1, otherwise. Numerical results are provided on a large library of problems to illustrate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed approach on both unconstrained and constrained problems.