Amalgamation performances of gold-coated quartz wool,alumina, silica,sand and carbon fiber for the determination of inorganic mercury in waters by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry

Different gold-coated sorbents for amalgamation were applied for the determination of inorganic mercury in waters using a home-made cold vapor generation unit coupled to atomic absorption spectrometry. Among the gold-coated materials investigated (quartz wool, alumina, silica, sand and carbon fiber) quartz wool was found to give the most efficient results in terms of sorption and release. Analytical performance of the system without and with amalgamation was investigated and it was found that when amalgamation was applied, the linearity and slope of the calibration plots were independent on the sample volume for 1.0, 5.0 and 10.0 mL. Method validation was realized through the analysis of a sample of spring water spiked with 1.0 μg/L inorganic mercury and the spike recoveries were found to be 95 ± 1, 91 ± 3, and 99 ± 5% for 1.0, 5.0, and 10.0 mL, respectively. The results demonstrated that the methodology can be applied to these types of samples directly or after amalgamation, depending on the mercury concentration.     

A Novel and Selective Methylene Blue Imprinted Polymer Modified Carbon Paste Electrode

In this study, methylene blue (MB) imprinted microbeads were synthesized and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).Differential pulse voltammetric responses of carbon paste electrodes modified with MB imprinted polymer were used to evaluate the adsorption and selectivity features of the polymer. For selectivity studies two basic dyestuffs (thionine blue and toluidine blue) which have similar structure to MB were chosen. Comparison of the voltammetric responses obtained with pure carbon paste and carbon paste modified with either imprinted or nonimprinted polymer electrodes revealed that MB imprinted polymer presented a higher selectivity to the template molecule MB in contrast to structurally similar molecules, thionine blue and toluidine blue.     

Modeling the Dynamics and Kinematics of a Telescopic Rotary Crane by the Bond Graph Method: Part I

Cranes employed for load transfer are large volume machines and canbe designed to accomplish linear, planar or spatial motions dependingon the intended use. Understanding the dynamic behavior of thesesystems, which have a load-carrying capacity of hundreds of tonnes, ishighly noteworthy for system design, control, and work safety. Inthis study, a theoretical model of a spatially actuated telescopic rotarycrane is obtained with provided assumptions using Bond Graph techniques.Following the modeling of an actuation system and of a main structure,unification of these two is accomplished. Since the overall system consistsof high nonlinearity originating from geometric nonlinearity, gyroscopicforces, hydraulic compressibility, and elastic boom structure, the resultingderivative causality problem caused by rigidly coupled inertia elementsis addressed for this highly nonlinear system and consequential systemstate-space equations are presented.     

Single scale factor for the universe from the creation of radiation and matter till the present

For a long time, global fits of the electroweak sector of the standard model (SM) have been used to exploit measurements of electroweak precision observables at lepton colliders (LEP, SLC), together with measurements at hadron colliders (Tevatron, LHC) and accurate theoretical predictions at multi-loop level, to constrain free parameters of the SM, such as the Higgs and top masses. Today, all fundamental SM parameters entering these fits are experimentally determined, including information on the Higgs couplings, and the global fits are used as powerful tools to assess the validity of the theory and to constrain scenarios for new physics. Future measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the International Linear Collider (ILC) promise to improve the experimental precision of key observables used in the fits. This paper presents updated electroweak fit results using the latest NNLO theoretical predictions and prospects for the LHC and ILC. The impact of experimental and theoretical uncertainties is analysed in detail. We compare constraints from the electroweak fit on the Higgs couplings with direct LHC measurements, and we examine present and future prospects of these constraints using a model with modified couplings of the Higgs boson to fermions and bosons.     

Energy absorption behavior of stiffness optimized graded lattice structures fabricated by material extrusion

The objective of this study is to investigate the energy absorption performance of the graded lattice energy absorbers designed by a stiffness-based size optimization process under static loadings applied during the in-service conditions. The energy absorber geometry is modeled using three different lattice types, namely complex cubic, octet cubic, face- and body-centered cubic. The stiffness-based size optimization subjected to a static bending load is conducted to determine the optimal strut diameters which produced graded lattice structure designs. To investigate the energy absorption behavior of these graded lattice designs, the nonlinear dynamic explicit finite element analysis (FEA) is conducted under quasi-static compression for each design. The lattice designs are fabricated by a material extrusion technique using the polylactic acid material and the quasi-static uniaxial compression tests are conducted on the fabricated designs. The FEA results are found to be in good agreement with the experimental results. When compared with uniform counterparts, the presented graded lattices exhibit the improved energy absorption in response to uniaxial compression although their designs were derived from a stiffness-based size optimization with bending load.

     

Ionic Liquid Modified Single‐use Electrode Developed for Voltammetric Detection of miRNA‐34a and its Application to Real Samples

The ionic liquid (IL) modified chemically activated (CA) pencil graphite electrodes (PGEs) were developed for label‐free voltammetric detection of miRNA‐34a, and implemented to the real samples. Firstly, the electrochemical characterization of unmodified PGE, CA‐PGE, IL‐PGE and IL‐CA‐PGE was performed by cyclic voltammetry (CV) as well as their DNA binding capacity was studied by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technique. The microscopic characterization of the surface of each electrodes was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) technique was used for measuring the oxidation signal of guanine in order to perform a label‐free voltammetric monitoring of a full‐match hybridization specific to miRNA‐34a. The selectivity of biosensor was tested against to miRNA‐155, miRNA‐660 as well as to the mismatch sequence of miRNA‐34a. The further selectivity of this proposed biosensor was studied in the mixture of samples containing miRNA‐34a with other miRNAs (1 : 1). The voltammetric detection of miRNA‐34a was also explored in the artificial serum medium as fetal bovine serum (FBS) and also in total RNA samples isolated from HUH‐7 human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line.     

Bispectrum estimation using a MISO autoregressive model

Bispectra are third-order statistics that have been used extensively in analyzing nonlinear and non-Gaussian data. Bispectrum of a process can be computed as the Fourier transform of its bicumulant sequence. It is in general hard to obtain reliable bicumulant samples at high lags since they suffer from large estimation variance. This paper proposes a novel approach for estimating bispectrum from a small set of given low lag bicumulant samples. The proposed approach employs an underlying MISO system composed of stable and causal autoregressive components. We provide an algorithm to compute the parameters of such a system from the given bicumulant samples. Experimental results show that our approach is capable of representing non-polynomial spectra with a stable underlying system model, which results in better bispectrum estimation than the leading algorithm in the literature.     

Investigation of Luminescence Properties of Eu3+, Dy3+ and Gd3+ Doped MgAl2Si2O8 Red‐emitting Phosphors

Rare‐earth‐doped aluminosilicates of alkaline earth MgAl₂Si₂O₈: Eu³⁺, Dy³⁺ and MgAl₂Si₂O₈: Eu³⁺, Gd³⁺ were synthesized by the solid state reaction method at 1300 ^oC. The phosphors were characterized by X‐ray powder diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence (PL), thermoluminescence (TL) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). X‐ray powder diffraction studies show that the phosphors were crystallized in the triclinic crystal system. The phosphors show characteristic broad band phosphorescence of Eu³⁺. This broad band phosphorescence has red emission bands in the range of 580–705 nm corresponding to ⁵D₀ → ⁷F_j (j:0,2,3,4) transitions of Eu³⁺.