An infrared spectroscopy study of PES PVP blend and PES-g-PVP copolymer

Systematic study of FTIR spectra was carried out on the PES/PVP blends and PES-g-PVP copolymers. In the blends, no shift of carbonyl group absorbance was observed. In the copolymers, there was an occurrence of blue-shift that increases with the grafting degree, which can be used as a compelling evidence of PVP being grafted onto PES. This phenomenon was interpreted from the stereo-hindrance effect. Besides, as the intensity of carbonyl group absorbance increased proportionally with the degree of grafting obtained by elementary analysis, FTIR, a simple and easy tool, became feasible for the quantitative determination of PVP content in the graft copolymers. Calibration curves with high correlation coefficient were established from which the quantitative relationship between the intensity of carbonyl group absorbance normalized by a chosen internal reference and the grafting degree can be obtained.     

Combination of medical and health care based on digital smartphone-powered photochemical dongle for renal function management

Currently, the global healthcare market is increasing at high speed with the impendent global aging issue. Healthcare Industry 4.0 has emerged as an efficient solution towards the aging issue since it was integrated with ubiquitous medical sensors, big health processing platform, high bandwidth, speed technologies, and medical services, etc. It is believed to fulfil the requirement of the tremendously growing health market. The acquisition of medical data acts as the dominant precondition to implement the Healthcare Industry 4.0. In the same way, the widely available smartphone could serve as the best biomedical information collect station. In this study, a smartphone-powered photochemical dongle is demonstrated to precisely estimate blood creatinine from the fingertip blood, which works as a highly compact reflectance spectral analyzer with an enzymatically dry chemical test strip. Comparing with conventional laboratory facility for the evaluation and treatment of chronic kidney disease (CKD), it implemented the platform of point care with agreed accuracy. In order to estimate the efficiency of treatment and recovery of the CKD, the proposed photochemical dongle would provide a flexible and rapid platform for point of care. Furthermore, the proposed measured technology is very promising method for remote CKD management.     

A trans-ortho asymmetrically di-strapped metalloporphyrin integrating three key structural features of ligand in heme

Heme responsible for the dioxygen fixation, transport and conversion is a metalloporphyrin complex highly dependent on its diverse geometry of ligand. In this work, a trans-ortho-di-strapped zinc porphyrin with dome-like deformation was synthesized by thermodynamically controlling the formation of trans-precursor of porphyrinogen. Its single-crystal structure demonstrated that the asymmetric treatment of porphyrin achieves three goals of creating two secondary coordination sphere (SCS) bulks, maintaining a unique dome deformation, and making atomic out-of-plane deviation. In this way, this metallic complex integrates at least three key features of the pocket structure, the differentiated axial ligations, and the ring distortion, making it an ideal heme analog.     

Simultaneous monitoring of the fluorescence and refractive index by surface plasmon coupled emission: A proof-of-concept study

Simultaneous acquisition of fluorescence property and refractive index using a single surface plasmon coupled emission (SPCE) measurement has been achieved, thus achieving synchronicity in real time. The SPCE sensor was employed for monitoring the adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by dye-encapsulated metal-organic frameworks (Dye@MOFs). Refractive index can reveal surface molecular adsorption and the fluorescence with information on refractive index can provide a comprehensive analysis of the adsorption events of VOCs on the interface. Meantime, the signal intensity can be amplified by combining the responses caused by changes in refractive index and the fluorescence property in parallel. This all-in-one method opens up a route to monitoring multiple processes simultaneously occurring on the interface.     

Multi-window visual saliency extraction for fusion of visible and infrared images

Fusion for visible and infrared images aims to combine the source images of the same scene into a single image with more feature information and better visual performance. In this paper, the authors propose a fusion method based on multi-window visual saliency extraction for visible and infrared images. To extract feature information from infrared and visible images, we design local-window-based frequency-tuned method. With this idea, visual saliency maps are calculated for variable feature information under different local window. These maps show the weights of people’s attention upon images for each pixel and region. Enhanced fusion is done using simple weight combination way. Compared with the classical and state-of-the-art approaches, the experimental results demonstrate the proposed approach runs efficiently and performs better than other methods, especially in visual performance and details enhancement.     

Single atom catalytic oxidation mechanism of formaldehyde on Al doped graphene at room temperature

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is one kind of common indoor toxic pollutant, the catalytic oxidation degradation of formaldehyde at room temperature is desired. In this work, a new single atomic catalyst (SAC), Al doped graphene, for the catalytic oxidation of HCHO molecules was proposed through density function theory (DFT) calculations. It is found that Al atoms can be adsorbed on graphene stably without aggression. Then HCHO can be effectively oxidized into CO₂ and H₂O in the presence of O₂ molecules on Al doped graphene with a low energy barrier of 0.82 eV and releasing energy of 2.29 eV with the pathway of HCHO → HCOOH → CO → CO₂. The oxidation reaction can happen promptly with reaction time τ = 56.9 s at the speed control step at room temperature. Therefore, this work proposed a high-performance catalyst Al-doped graphene without any noble metal for HCHO oxidation at ambient temperature, and corresponding oxidation pathway and mechanism are also deeply understood.     

Continuous-variable multimode entanglement in multi-wave mixing

We present a scheme to obtain continuous-variable multimode entanglement via multi-wave mixing. For a four-level atomic system in a diamond configuration, four strong coherence fields are applied to the four dipole-allowed transitions to amplify eight sidebands as cavity fields, respectively. Due to the atomic coherence, the eight side modes constitute a pair of double quantum-beats and combine into two quantum-beat collective modes, which are in a four-wave mixing parametric interaction. As a result, the entanglement occurs between these two collective modes. Correspondingly, any two individual modes from two different collective modes are entangled with each other. This gives rise to continuous-variable eight-mode entanglement with different frequencies, which has extensively application in quantum communication and quantum network.     

Effect of hole doping and antiferromagnetic coupling on the itinerant ferromagnetism of through Cu substitution at Ru site

Systematic studies on the structural, transport and magnetic properties of SrRu_1−xCu_xO₃ (x=0.0–0.2) compounds have been performed. SrRu_0.8Cu_0.2O₃ shows a tetragonal structure unlike the other compositions which exhibit a pseudo-cubic structure. Low temperature powder X-ray diffraction data of SrRu_0.8Cu_0.2O₃ collected at a synchrotron beam line reveals that the tetragonal structure is stable down to 8 K. Ferromagnetic transition temperatures (T_c) are significantly reduced from 160 to 34 K with Cu doping. All the compositions exhibit irreversibilities in M_ZFC(T) and M_FC(T) curves ascribable to the presence of domain structures. Magnetic susceptibility measurements show that the copper ions are anti-ferromagnetically coupled for concentrations higher than x=0.16. The antiparallel arrangement of Ru⁵⁺ ions with its neighboring cations also contributes to the large reduction in the observed magnetic moment. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy measurements show evidence for both tetravalent and pentavalent Ru ions while copper is in a divalent state. We conclude from our resistivity data that Cu²⁺ substitution promotes a polaronic type of conductivity.     

Common features in high Tc cuprates and diborides

The normal state of magnesium diboride, the simplest metallic system showing the macroscopic quantum coherence at high temperature (high T_c superconductivity––HTcS) shows some features that are common with the cuprates, shedding light on the pairing mechanism for T_c amplification in HTcS: (1) two or more electronic components associated with multiple Fermi surface portions; (2) crossing of electronic topological transitions (ETT) where the Fermi surface changes its topology and (3) phonon softening in extended Kohn anomalies (EKA) over a large wave-vector range.