Failure of color constancy for high luminance of a test patch that appears unnatural as an object in a space

The theory of the recognized visual space of illumination (RVSI) is that the color appearance of objects in a space is determined in relation to its recognition axis RX whose direction is determined by the brain action to adapt to the illumination in the space. Thus the color constancy holds. RX is applicable to objects in the space but not to an object or a portion that does not belong in the space in terms of illumination, that is to say, the luminance of which is too high based on the illumination for that space. In that case the color appearance would be determined in relation to the fundamental axis FX and the color constancy would not hold. In the present paper the chromaticity points were measured for a test patch that appeared achromatic for various luminance of the patch. The points were close to the color of illumination to indicate the color constancy when the luminance was low enough to assure its appearance as the object color, but they departed from the color of illumination and approached the colorimetrically achromatic color. The color constancy gradually failed for the test patch with the high luminance when the color mode became an unnatural object color and then a light color.     

Selective stabilisation of blue phase liquid crystal induced by distinctive geometric structure of additives

We successfully stabilised liquid crystalline blue phases (BPs) by introducing two suitable additives with different geometric molecular structures, linear-shaped cobalt oleate complex (Co-OL) or tetrahedral-shaped tetraoctadecylammonium bromide (TODAB), into a liquid crystal (mixture of 4?-pentyl-4-biphenylcarbonitrile, JC-1041XX and chiral dopant). The BPs temperature range and phase sequence depending on the addition amount and shape of additives were systematically investigated to determine the optimal concentration and shape dependency required to achieve a stabilising effect for BPs. From the polarising optical microscope results, the BPs temperature range for all of the samples with additives was not only broadened but also shifted to room temperature compared to that of BPs without additives. The widest BPs temperature range was increased to 15.3°C by the addition of 3 wt% Co-OL. According to the UV-vis reflection spectroscopy results, the Co-OL has a more significant stabilisation effect on BP I than on BP II, and the widest BP I range increases to 11.0°C. On the other hand, TODAB is effective for BP II stabilisation with the broadest BP II range reaching 1.8°C. These selective stabilisation effects are attributed to the specific shape of additives that closely match the structures of the disclination lines of the BPs.     

Rotational Spectroscopy of 2-Furoic Acid and Its Dimer: Conformational Distribution and Double Proton Tunneling

Structural and tunneling properties of the 2-furoic acid (FA) monomer and dimer were investigated using rotational spectroscopy and DFT calculations. CREST, a conformational ensemble space exploration tool, was used to identify all possible low-energy conformations of the FA monomer and dimer, followed by the DFT geometry optimization and harmonic frequency calculations. Broadband rotational spectra in the 2–6 and 8–12 GHz regions were recorded in a supersonic jet expansion. The monomeric FA was found to exist dominantly as three different conformers: I , II , and III in a jet, with I and II taking on the cis-COOH configuration while III having the trans-COOH configuration. For the FA dimer, only the I – II conformer was observed experimentally, whereas the symmetric I – I and II – II conformers were not observed because of their zero dipole moments. The analysis of the splittings in the rotational transitions of I – II allowed one to extract the tunneling splitting to be 1056.0(12) MHz. The barrier height was determined to be ∼442 cm⁻¹ using the scaled potential energy scans at several different levels of theory.     

Microfiltration platform for continuous blood plasma protein extraction from whole blood during cardiac surgery

This report describes the design, fabrication, and testing of a cross-flow filtration microdevice, for the continuous extraction of blood plasma from a circulating whole blood sample in a clinically relevant environment to assist in continuous monitoring of a patient's inflammatory response during cardiac surgeries involving cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) procedures (about 400,000 adult and 20,000 pediatric patients in the United States per year). The microfiltration system consists of a two-compartment mass exchanger with two aligned sets of PDMS microchannels, separated by a porous polycarbonate (PCTE) membrane. Using this microdevice, blood plasma has been continuously separated from blood cells in a real-time manner with no evidence of bio-fouling or cell lysis. The technology is designed to continuously extract plasma containing diagnostic plasma proteins such as complements and cytokines using a significantly smaller blood volume as compared to traditional blood collection techniques. The microfiltration device has been tested using a simulated CPB circulation loop primed with donor human blood, in a manner identical to a clinical surgical setup, to collect plasma fractions in order to study the effects of CPB system components and circulation on immune activation during extracorporeal circulatory support. The microdevice, with 200 nm membrane pore size, was connected to a simulated CPB circuit, and was able to continuously extract ~15% pure plasma volume (100% cell-free) with high sampling frequencies which could be analyzed directly following collection with no need to further centrifuge or modify the fraction. Less than 2.5 ml total plasma volume was collected over a 4 h sampling period (less than one Vacutainer blood collection tube volume). The results tracked cytokine concentrations collected from both the reservoir and filtrate samples which were comparable to those from direct blood draws, indicating very high protein recovery of the microdevice. Additionally, the cytokine concentration increased significantly compared to baseline values over the circulation time for all cytokines analyzed. The high plasma protein recovery (over 80%), no indication of hemolysis and low level of biofouling on the membrane surface during the experimental period (over 4 h) were all indications of effective and reliable device performance for future clinical applications. The simple and robust design and operation of these devices allow operation over a wide range of experimental flow conditions and blood hematocrit levels to allow surgeons and clinicians autonomous usage in a clinical environment to better understand the mechanisms of injury resulting from cardiac surgery, and allow early interventions in patients with excessive postoperative complications to improve surgical outcomes. Ultimately, monolithic integration of this microfiltration device with a continuous microimmunoassay would create an integrated microanalysis system for tracking inflammation biomarkers concentrations in patients for point-of-care diagnostics, reducing blood analysis times, costs and volume of blood samples required for repeated assays.     

Na<Superscript>+</Superscript>-stimulated ATPase of alkaliphilic halotolerant cyanobacterium <Emphasis Type="Italic">Aphanothece halophytica</Emphasis> translocates Na<Superscript>+</Superscript> into proteoliposomes via Na<Superscript>+</Superscript> uniport mechanism

Background  

When cells are exposed to high salinity conditions, they develop a mechanism to extrude excess Na⁺ from cells to maintain the cytoplasmic Na⁺ concentration. Until now, the ATPase involved in Na⁺ transport in cyanobacteria has not been characterized. Here, the characterization of ATPase and its role in Na⁺ transport of alkaliphilic halotolerant Aphanothece halophytica were investigated to understand the survival mechanism of A. halophytica under high salinity conditions.     

Synthesis and Characterization of O,O'-Bis(α-Naphthyl, β-Naphthyl,and 2, 3, 5-Trimethylphenyl)Dithiophosphate Ligands

Abstract

O,O′-Bis(α-Naphthyl, β-Naphthyl and 2,3,5-trimethylphenyl) dithiophosphate ligands have been isolated as triethylammonium salts, (α-C₁₀H₇O-, β-C₁₀H₇O, and (CH₃)₃C₆H₂O)₂PS₂HNEt₃, by the reaction of α-C₁₀H₇OH, β-C₁₀H₇OH, or (CH₃)₃C₆H₂OH with P₂S₅ in presence of Et₃N, in 4:1:2 molar ratio in chloroform under anhydrous conditions. Acidic form of these ligands, (α-C₁₀H₇O-, β-C₁₀H₇O-, or (CH₃)₃C₆H₂O)₂PS₂H, have been obtained by the direct reaction of α-C₁₀H₇OH, β-C₁₀H₇OH-, or (CH₃)₃C₆H₂OH with P₂S₅ in 4:1 molar ratio in presence of microwaves under solvent-free conditions. Both forms of the ligands have been converted into corresponding sodium salts, (α -C₁₀H₇O-, β-C₁₀H₇O-, or (CH₃)₃C₆H₂O)₂PS₂Na. These compounds have been characterized by elemental analyses (C, H, N, and S) and mass, IR, and NMR (¹H, ¹³C and ³¹P) spectroscopic studies.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Phosphorus, Sulfur, and Silicon and the Related Elements to view the free supplemental file.     

The Brain Adaptation to the Color of Illumination and not the Retinal Adaptation to the Color of Objects that Determines the Color Appearance of an Object in the Space

Color appearance was measured for a test patch which was placed in a test room illuminated by the daylight type of illumination and was looked at from the subject room illuminated by one of the four colored illuminations, red, yellow, green, and blue, through a window of three different sizes. When the window was the smallest so that only the test patch was seen within the window the color of the test patch appeared almost opponent to the illumination color, but as soon as something is seen within the window of larger size the color returned to the original color of the test patch to indicate the color constancy. To recognize the test room as a space was essential to perceive the real color of the test patch. This returning to the original colors was not influenced by green color of objects densely placed in the test room or by red color of objects again densely placed in the test room. The results imply that the color appearance of the test patch is not determined by the retinal chromatic adaptation, but by the brain adaptation to color of the illumination in the space.     

Spectral band independent recognition in a differential binary joint transform correlator

Images of a target in a specific spectral band in general show no correlation with images of the same target in a different spectral band. Hence in a joint transform correlator (JTC) architecture, if the reference and input target are the images captured through a visible (e.g., charge-coupled device or CCD camera) and infrared (IR) detector, autocorrelation peaks are not obtained. This drawback has been overcome in this paper by the use of a CCD–IR fused image as the reference image. Daubechies wavelet transform, which produces the least root-mean-square (RMS) error in the fusion process in comparison to other wavelets, has been used for the purpose. A comparative analysis of the proposed idea has been carried out for the classical JTC (CJTC), binary JTC (BJTC) and differential binary JTC (DBJTC) algorithms. Since the DBJTC removes the dc completely and produces sharp correlation peaks compared to the other techniques, computer simulation and experimental results are shown for the proposed idea using DBJTC. The same fused reference image has also been used to identify multiple targets in a scene using DBJTC. Performance measures like correlation peak intensity (CPI), dc/ac and peak correlation energy (PCE) have been calculated as metrics of goodness for the proposed scheme.