Peroxide Coordination of Tellurium in Aqueous Solutions

Tellurium–peroxo complexes in aqueous solutions have never been reported. In this work, ammonium peroxotellurates (NH₄)₄Te₂(μ‐OO)₂(μ‐O)O₄(OH)₂ ( 1 ) and (NH₄)₅Te₂(μ‐OO)₂(μ‐O)O₅(OH)?1.28 H₂O?0.72 H₂O₂ ( 2 ) were isolated from 5 % hydrogen peroxide aqueous solutions of ammonium tellurate and characterized by single‐crystal and powder X‐ray diffraction analysis, by Raman spectroscopy and thermal analysis. The crystal structure of 1 comprises ammonium cations and a symmetric binuclear peroxotellurate anion [Te₂(μ‐OO)₂(μ‐O)O₄(OH)₂]^4?. The structure of 2 consists of an unsymmetrical [Te₂(μ‐OO)₂(μ‐O)O₅(OH)]^5? anion, ammonium cations, hydrogen peroxide, and water. Peroxotellurate anions in both 1 and 2 contain a binuclear Te₂(μ‐OO)₂(μ‐O) fragment with one μ‐oxo‐ and two μ‐peroxo bridging groups. ¹²⁵Te NMR spectroscopic analysis shows that the peroxo bridged bitellurate anions are the dominant species in solution, with 3–40 %wt H₂O₂ and for pH values above 9. DFT calculations of the peroxotellurate anion confirm its higher thermodynamic stability compared with those of the oxotellurate analogues. This is the first direct evidence for tellurium–peroxide coordination in any aqueous system and the first report of inorganic tellurium–peroxo complexes. General features common to all reported p‐block element peroxides could be discerned by the characterization of aqueous and crystalline peroxotellurates.     

Numerical analysis of stress distribution in the upper arm tissues under an inflatable cuff: Implications for noninvasive blood pressure measurement

An inflatable cuff wrapped around the upper arm is widely used in noninvasive blood pressure measurement. However, the mechanical interaction between cuff and arm tissues, a factor that potentially affects the accuracy of noninvasive blood pressure measurement, remains rarely addressed. In the present study, finite element (FE) mod-els were constructed to quantify intra-arm stresses generated by cuff compression, aiming to provide some theoretical evi-dence for identifying factors of importance for blood pressure measurement or explaining clinical observations. Obtained results showed that the simulated tissue stresses were highly sensitive to the distribution of cuff pressure on the arm sur-face and the contact condition between muscle and bone. In contrast, the magnitude of cuff pressure and small variations in elastic properties of arm soft tissues had little influence on the efficiency of pressure transmission in arm tissues. In par-ticular, it was found that a thickened subcutaneous fat layer in obese subjects significantly reduced the effective pres-sure transmitted to the brachial artery, which may explain why blood pressure overestimation occurs more frequently in obese subjects in noninvasive blood pressure measurement.     

一种基于Gauss von Mises分布模型的非线性量测更新方法

基于状态空间模型的许多传统滤波算法都基于Rn空间中的高斯分布模型,但当状态向量中包含角变量或方向变量时,难以达到理想的效果。针对J.T.Horwood等提出的nS?R流形上的Gauss Von Mises(GVM)多变量概率密度分布,扩展了狄拉克混合逼近方法,给出了联合分布的GVM逼近方法,推导了后验分布的GVM参数计算公式,设计了量测更新状态估计算法。将J.T.Horwood等的时间更新算法与所提出的量测更新算法相结合,可实现基于GVM分布的递推贝叶斯滤波器(GVMF)。仿真结果表明,当状态向量符合GVM概率分布模型时,GVMF对角变量的估计明显优于传统的扩展卡尔曼滤波器。     

Random walks in cones: The case of nonzero drift

We consider multidimensional discrete valued random walks with nonzero drift killed when leaving general cones of the euclidean space. We find the asymptotics for the exit time from the cone and study weak convergence of the process conditioned on not leaving the cone. We get quasistationarity of its limiting distribution. Finally we construct a version of the random walk conditioned to never leave the cone.     

Strain gradient plasticity analysis of elasto-plastic contact between rough surfaces

From a microscopic point of view, the real contact area between two rough surfaces is the sum of the areas of contact between facing asperities. Since the real contact area is a fraction of the nominal contact area, the real contact pressure is much higher than the nominal contact pressure, which results in plastic deformation of asperities. As plasticity is size dependent at size scales below tens of micrometers, with the general trend of smaller being harder, macroscopic plasticity is not suitable to describe plastic deformation of small asperities and thus fails to capture the real contact area and pressure accurately. Here we adopt conventional mechanism-based strain gradient plasticity (CMSGP) to analyze the contact between a rigid platen and an elasto-plastic solid with a rough surface. Flattening of a single sinusoidal asperity is analyzed first to highlight the difference between CMSGP and J₂ isotropic plasticity. For the rough surface contact, besides CMSGP, pure elastic and J₂ isotropic plasticity analysis is also carried out for comparison. In all cases, the contact area A rises linearly with the applied load, but with a different slope which implies that the mean contact pressures are different. CMSGP produces qualitative changes in the distributions of local contact pressures compared with pure elastic and J₂ isotropic plasticity analysis, furthermore, bounded by the two.     

Characterizing and Generating Bivariate Empirical Rank Distributions Satisfying Certain Positive Dependence Concepts

Abstract

This article introduces an approach for characterizing the classes of empirical distributions that satisfy certain positive dependence notions. Mathematically, this can be expressed as studying certain subsets of the class S_N of permutations of 1, …, N, where each subset corresponds to some positive dependence notions. Explicit techniques for it-eratively characterizing subsets of S_N that satisfy certain positive dependence concepts are obtained and various counting formulas are given. Based on these techniques, graph-theoretic methods are used to introduce new and more efficient algorithms for constructively generating and enumerating the elements of various of these subsets of S_N. For example, the class of positively quadrant dependent permutations in S_N is characterized in this fashion.     

Estimating Precision in Functional Images

Abstract

Functional imaging of biologic parameters like in vivo tissue metabolism is made possible by Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Many techniques have been suggested for extracting such images from dynamic time-course sequences of reconstructed PET scans. Quantitating the precision of these estimates is important for drawing inferences on the biologic parameters. Analytic variance formulas are not immediate owing to the nonlinear methods used in extraction. The usual resampling approach is infeasible because each image reconstruction in PET is a computationally demanding solution to a high-dimensional linear inverse problem. We suggest an alternative simulation approach that approximates the distribution of reconstructed PET scans and performs a parametric bootstrap in the imaging domain. Results on a simplified model chosen to match the characteristics of PET reconstruction are very encouraging. Mixture analysis is used to estimate functional images; however, the suggested approach is general enough to extend to other techniques or imaging methods.     

Importance Sampling for p-value Computations in Multivariate Tests

Abstract

An importance sampling procedure is developed to approximate the distribution of an arbitrary function of the eigenvalues for a matrix beta random matrix or a Wishart random matrix. The procedure is easily implemented and provides confidence intervals for the p-values of many of the commonly used test statistics in multivariate analysis. An adaptive procedure allows for the control of either absolute error or relative error in this p-value estimation through the choice of importance sample size.     

Modeling partial Greeks of variable annuities with dependence

Dynamic hedging used to mitigate the financial risks associated with large portfolios of variable annuities requires calculating partial dollar deltas on major market indices. Metamodeling approaches have been proposed in the past few years to address the computational issues related to the calculation of partial dollar deltas. In this paper, we investigate whether the additional complication of modeling the dependence between the partial dollar deltas improves the accuracy of the metamodeling approaches. We use several copulas to model the dependence structures of the partial dollar deltas and conduct numerical experiments to compare different metamodels. Despite the evidence of strong dependence in the estimated models, our numerical results show that modeling the dependence structures in the metamodels does not improve the accuracy of the estimations at the portfolio level. This is because the dependence between the partial dollar deltas is well captured by the covariates used in the marginal models. This finding suggests that we should focus more on marginal models than specifying the dependence structure explicitly.     

A model of product line design and introduction sequence with reservation utility

Cannibalization is a major concern for a firm when designing a product line. In addition, external options from outside the firm’s product line may also play a significant role. In this paper, we investigate the impact of external options, represented by reservation utility, on product line design and introduction sequence. We find that: (a) heterogeneous reservation utility defines the relative attractiveness of segments and corresponding product line; (b) reservation utility makes it more favorable to introduce products sequentially rather than simultaneously; (c) aggregating segments is an effective way to mitigate cannibalization when it becomes too difficult to manage with different values of reservation utility across multiple segments; and (d) introducing products in a non-monotone order of quality can improve profit from simultaneous introduction when the value of reservation utility of a middle segment is particularly high.