Phase transfer of highly monodisperse iron oxide nanocrystals with Pluronic F127 for biomedical applications

Iron oxide nanoparticles made from the thermal decomposition method are highly uniform in all respects (size, shape, composition and crystallography), making them ideal candidates for many bioapplications. The surfactant coating on the as-synthesized nanoparticles renders the nanoparticles insoluble in aqueous solutions. For biological applications nanoparticles must be water soluble. Here we demonstrate the phase transfer of our nanoparticles with the biocompatible copolymer Pluronic F127. Transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and dynamic light scattering indicate that the nanoparticles are coated discretely. Magnetic measurements show that the nanoparticles remain superparamagnetic with saturation magnetization ∼96% of the maximum theoretical value.     

Structural, electrical and optical properties of ZnS films deposited by close-spaced evaporation

ZnS films have been deposited on glass substrates by close-spaced evaporation (CSE) technique. The films were grown at different temperatures in the range, 200-350 °C. The layers have been characterized with X-ray diffractometer (XRD), atomic force microscope (AFM), energy dispersive analysis of X-rays (EDAX) and optical spectrophotometer to evaluate the quality of the layers for photovoltaic applications. The studies showed that the optimum substrate temperature for the growth of ZnS layers was 300 °C. The films grown at these temperatures exhibited cubic structure with nearly stoichiometric composition. The AFM data revealed that the films had nano-sized grains with a grain size of ∼40 nm. The optical studies exhibited direct allowed transition with an energy band gap of 3.61 eV. The other structural and optical parameters such as lattice stress, dislocation density, refractive index and extinction coefficient were also evaluated. The temperature-dependent conductivity measured in the range, 303-523 K showed a change in the conduction mechanism at 120 °C. The activation energy values evaluated using the temperature dependence of electrical conductivity are 7 and 29 meV at low and high temperature regions, respectively.     

On cellularization for simplicial presheaves and motivic homotopy

We construct cellular homotopy theories for categories of simplicial presheaves on small Grothendieck sites and discuss applications to the motivic homotopy category of Morel and Voevodsky.     

On the pivot structure for the weighing matrix W(12,11)

In the present article we concentrate our study on the growth problem for the weighing matrix W(12,11) and show that the unique W(12,11) has three pivot structures. An improved algorithm for extending a k × k (0,+,-) matrix to a W(n,n-1), if possible, has been developed to simplify the proof. For the implementation of the algorithm special emphasis is given to the notions of data structures and parallel processing.     

Measures on minimally generated Boolean algebras

We investigate properties of minimally generated Boolean algebras. It is shown that all measures defined on such algebras are separable but not necessarily weakly uniformly regular. On the other hand, there exist Boolean algebras small in terms of measures which are not minimally generated. We prove that under CH a measure on a retractive Boolean algebra can be nonseparable. Some relevant examples are indicated. Also, we give two examples of spaces satisfying some kind of Efimov property.     

Sol-gel preparation and optical properties of SiO2-Ta2O5 glass

Tantalum-doped silica glass was fabricated by the sol-gel process in order to obtain a glass with a high refractive index for optical use. A crack-free, clear glass rod was successfully prepared from a low-density gel and used as the core material for fabricating optical fibers. Transmission loss in the fabricated fibers was high, in the range of 10³-10⁴ dB/km, which may be caused by coloration due to the multivalency of tantalum; however, the loss was reduced by nearly one order of magnitude by heat treatment at 800 °C, that is, to 75 dB/km at a wavelength of 0.8 μm.     

Über die abstandsverträglichen Abbildungen auf dem Kreis und auf der reellen Geraden

Zusammenfassung. Eine Abbildung zwischen metrischen R?umen hei?t abstandsvertr?glich, wenn der Abstand der Bilder zweier Punkte nur vom Abstand der Punkte selbst abh?ngt. Wir zeigen, dass eine Abbildung genau dann abstandsvertr?glich ist, wenn der Cauchyschen Funktionalgleichung genügt, also ein Endomorphismus der Gruppe ist. Ein entsprechendes Resultat gilt auch für die abstandsvertr?glichen Abbildungen des Kreises (mit der Multiplikation komplexer Zahlen als Gruppenverknüpfung). Damit kann man sowohl alle messbaren abstandsvertr?glichen Abbildungen von bzw. in sich angeben, als auch einen Nachweis für die Existenz nichtmessbarer abstandsvertr?glicher Abbildungen auf und erbringen. Eingegangen am 20. Juni 2001 / Angenommen am 13. September 2001     

Euler configurations and quasi-polynomial systems

Consider the problem of three point vortices (also called Helmholtz’ vortices) on a plane, with arbitrarily given vorticities. The interaction between vortices is proportional to 1/r, where r is the distance between two vortices. The problem has 2 equilateral and at most 3 collinear normalized relative equilibria. This 3 is the optimal upper bound. Our main result is that the above standard statements remain unchanged if we consider an interaction proportional to r ^b, for any b < 0. For 0 < b < 1, the optimal upper bound becomes 5. For positive vorticities and any b < 1, there are exactly 3 collinear normalized relative equilibria. The case b = −2 of this last statement is the well-known theorem due to Euler: in the Newtonian 3-body problem, for any choice of the 3 masses, there are 3 Euler configurations (also known as the 3 Euler points). These small upper bounds strengthen the belief of Kushnirenko and Khovanskii [18]: real varieties defined by simple systems should have a simple topology. We indicate some hard conjectures about the configurations of relative equilibrium and suggest they could be attacked within the quasi-polynomial framework.     

Some remarks concerning C-spaces

We comment on the definition of C-spaces in [D.F. Addis, J.H. Gresham, A class of infinite-dimensional spaces. Part I: Dimension theory and Alexandroff's Problem, Fund. Math. 101 (1978) 195-205] and [W.E. Haver, A covering property for metric spaces, in: Topology Conference at Virginia Polytechnic Institute 1973, in: Lecture Notes in Math., vol. 375, 1974, pp. 108-113]. Furthermore we introduce two types of ‘finite’ C-spaces one of which gives an internal characterization of all spaces having a metrizable compactification satisfying property C. We also introduce a transfinite dimension function for those finite C-spaces. Several questions arise that are related to Alexandrov's problem.     

Bias of the structural quasi-score estimator of a measurement error model under misspecification of the regressor distribution

In a structural measurement error model the structural quasi-score (SQS) estimator is based on the distribution of the latent regressor variable. If this distribution is misspecified, the SQS estimator is (asymptotically) biased. Two types of misspecification are considered. Both assume that the statistician erroneously adopts a normal distribution as his model for the regressor distribution. In the first type of misspecification, the true model consists of a mixture of normal distributions which cluster around a single normal distribution, in the second type, the true distribution is a normal distribution admixed with a second normal distribution of low weight. In both cases of misspecification, the bias, of course, tends to zero when the size of misspecification tends to zero. However, in the first case the bias goes to zero in a flat way so that small deviations from the true model lead to a negligible bias, whereas in the second case the bias is noticeable even for small deviations from the true model.