CRONE Control: Principles and Extension to Time-Variant Plants with Asymptotically Constant Coefficients

The principles of CRONE control, a frequency-domain robust control designmethodology based on fractional differentiation, are presented.Continuous time-variant plants with asymptotically constant coefficientsare analysed in the frequency domain, through their representation usingtime-variant frequency responses. A stability theorem for feedbacksystems including time-variant plants with asymptotically constantcoefficients is proposed. Finally, CRONE control is extended to robustcontrol of these plants.     

A solid-state frequency source for radio astronomy in the 100 to 1000 GHz range

A compact Gunn oscillator-multiplier combination can provide the for SIS receivers necessary LO power up to 1000 GHz. Frequency multiplication factors of 2 to 8 are accomplished in a single step using a Schottky mixer diode in the varistor mode.     

Efficient source of single photons: a single quantum dot in a micropost microcavity

We have demonstrated efficient production of triggered single photons by coupling a single semiconductor quantum dot to a three-dimensionally confined optical mode in a micropost microcavity. The efficiency of emitting single photons into a single-mode traveling wave is approximately 38%, which is nearly 2 orders of magnitude higher than for a quantum dot in bulk semiconductor material. At the same time, the probability of having more than one photon in a given pulse is reduced by a factor of 7 as compared to light with Poissonian photon statistics.     

A heterodyne receiver for the submillimeter wavelength region based on cyclotron resonance in InSb at low temperatures

A new heterodyne receiver has been developed for the submillimeter wavelength region. The mixing element is liquid helium cooled bulk n-InSb in a quantizing magnetic field. The value of the magnetic induction is such that the detector photoresponse is dominated by cyclotron-resonance absorption. Laboratory tests have yielded double-sideband receiver noise temperatures of 250 K at 492 GHz, 350 K at 625 GHz and 510 K at 812 GHz. The magnetic induction for these tests was 2.5 KG and the mixer operating temperature was 1.6 K.     

Synthesis of Carbon Nanohorns by Inductively Coupled Plasma

We demonstrate a new pathway for the synthesis of carbon nanohorns (CNHs) in a reactor by using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) and gaseous precursors. Thermal plasma synthesis allows the formation of different carbon allotropes such as carbon nanoflakes, hybrid forms of flakes and nanotubules, CNHs embryos, seed-like CNHs and onion-like polyhedral graphitic nanocapsules. In this study, pressure has the greatest impact on the selectivity of carbon nanostructures: pressure below 53.3 kPa favors the growth of carbon nanoflakes and higher pressures, 66.7 kPa and above, promotes the formation of CNHs. The ratio between methane and hydrogen as well as the global concentration of CH₄?+?H₂ inside the plasma flame are also crucial to the reaction. CNHs are formed preferentially by injection of a 1:2 ratio of H₂ to CH₄ at 82.7 kPa with a production rate of 20 g/h. The synthesis pathway is easily scalable and could be made continuous, which offers an interesting alternative compared to methods based on laser-, arc- or induction-based vaporization of graphite rods.

Graphical Abstract

     

Preparation of novel silica-cadmium sulfide composite nanoparticles having adjustable void space by size-selective photoetching

The size-selective photoetching technique was used to control the size of a CdS nanoparticle inside a silica shell. With monochromatic light irradiation, the diffuse reflectance spectra of silica-coated CdS nanoparticles were blue-shifted, and the size of the resulting CdS nanoparticles incorporated in the silica shells was adjustable by varying the wavelength of irradiated light. TEM observation revealed that the original CdS nanoparticle seemed to be in close contact with the amorphous silica shell to leave almost no clearance, while the monochromatic light irradiation caused the decrease in the size of CdS particles, resulting in the formation of a void space between the photoetched CdS core particle and the silica shell. The average void spaces available in the shells were calculated to be ca. 1.4 and 2.4 nm with the irradiation at 514 and 458 nm, respectively. These results indicated that the size-selective photoetching technique enables the regulation of void space formed in the core-shell structure by choosing the wavelength of irradiation light.     

A D3R prospective evaluation of machine learning for protein-ligand scoring

We assess the performance of several machine learning-based scoring methods at protein-ligand pose prediction, virtual screening, and binding affinity prediction. The methods and the manner in which they were trained make them sufficiently diverse to evaluate the utility of various strategies for training set curation and binding pose generation, but they share a novel approach to classification in the context of protein-ligand scoring. Rather than explicitly using structural data such as affinity values or information extracted from crystal binding poses for training, we instead exploit the abundance of data available from high-throughput screening to approach the problem as one of discriminating binders from non-binders. We evaluate the performance of our various scoring methods in the 2015 D3R Grand Challenge and find that although the merits of some features of our approach remain inconclusive, our scoring methods performed comparably to a state-of-the-art scoring function that was fit to binding affinity data.     

Riesz transforms of the Hodge–de Rham Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds

Let M be a complete non‐compact Riemannian manifold satisfying the volume doubling property. Let be the Hodge–de Rham Laplacian acting on 1‐differential forms. According to the Bochner formula, where and are respectively the positive and negative part of the Ricci curvature and ? is the Levi–Civita connection. We study the boundedness of the Riesz transform from to and of the Riesz transform from to . We prove that, if the heat kernel on functions satisfies a Gaussian upper bound and if the negative part of the Ricci curvature is ε‐sub‐critical for some , then is bounded from to and is bounded from to for where depends on ε and on a constant appearing in the volume doubling property. A duality argument gives the boundedness of the Riesz transform from to for where Δ is the non‐negative Laplace–Beltrami operator. We also give a condition on to be ε‐sub‐critical under both analytic and geometric assumptions.     

Lithium enolates of simple ketones: structure determination using the method of continuous variation

The method of continuous variation in conjunction with 6Li NMR spectroscopy was used to characterize lithium enolates derived from 1-indanone, cyclohexanone, and cyclopentanone in solution. The strategy relies on forming ensembles of homo- and heteroaggregated enolates. The enolates form exclusively chelated dimers in N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine and cubic tetramers in tetrahydrofuran and 1,2-dimethoxyethane.