A fluorescent probe for detecting thiamine using the luminescence intensity of nanoparticles

Determination of molecules and biomolecules using nanoparticles is promising in the development of analytical techniques. Modified Eu-doped Y₂O₃ nanoparticles (Y₂O₃:Eu NPs) by captopril have been used as a probe for thiamine (vitamin B₁) determination. According to the fluorescence enhancement of modified Eu-doped Y₂O₃ nanoparticles caused by thiamine, a simple and sensitive method were proposed for its detection. The increase in modified Y₂O₃:Eu NPs fluorescence signal as a function of thiamine concentration was found to be linear in the concentration range of 0–44 μM. The limit of detection (LOD) of thiamine by this method was 0.144 μM. All the measurements were performed in natural pH, at the room temperature under ambient conditions. Possible interaction mechanism was discussed.     

Sampling the Variational Posterior with Local Refinement

Variational inference is an optimization-based method for approximating the posterior distribution of the parameters in Bayesian probabilistic models. A key challenge of variational inference is to approximate the posterior with a distribution that is computationally tractable yet sufficiently expressive. We propose a novel method for generating samples from a highly flexible variational approximation. The method starts with a coarse initial approximation and generates samples by refining it in selected, local regions. This allows the samples to capture dependencies and multi-modality in the posterior, even when these are absent from the initial approximation. We demonstrate theoretically that our method always improves the quality of the approximation (as measured by the evidence lower bound). In experiments, our method consistently outperforms recent variational inference methods in terms of log-likelihood and ELBO across three example tasks: the Eight-Schools example (an inference task in a hierarchical model), training a ResNet-20 (Bayesian inference in a large neural network), and the Mushroom task (posterior sampling in a contextual bandit problem).     

Richardson-extrapolated sequential splitting and its application

During numerical time integration, the accuracy of the numerical solution obtained with a given step size often proves unsatisfactory. In this case one usually reduces the step size and repeats the computation, while the results obtained for the coarser grid are not used. However, we can also combine the two solutions and obtain a better result. This idea is based on the Richardson extrapolation, a general technique for increasing the order of an approximation method. This technique also allows us to estimate the absolute error of the underlying method. In this paper we apply Richardson extrapolation to the sequential splitting, and investigate the performance of the resulting scheme on several test examples.     

Gas-phase infrared and ab initio study of the unstable CF3CNO molecule and its stable furoxan ring dimer

The unstable trifluoroacetonitrile N-oxide molecule, CF3CNO, has been generated in high yield in the gas phase from CF3BrC=NOH and studied for the first time by gas-phase mid-infrared spectroscopy. Cold trapping of this molecule followed by slow warming forms the stable ring dimer, bis(trifluoromethyl)furoxan, also investigated by gas-phase infrared spectroscopy. The spectroscopy provides an investigation into the vibrational character of the two molecules, the assignments supported by calculations of the harmonic vibrational frequencies using in the case of CF3CNO both ab initio (CCSD(T)) and density functional theory (B3LYP) and B3LYP for the ring dimer. The ground-state structures of both molecules were investigated at the B3LYP level of theory, with CF3CNO further investigated using coupled-cluster. The CCSD(T) method suggests a slightly bent (C(s)) structure for CF3CNO, while the B3LYP method (with basis sets ranging from 6-311G(d) to cc-pVTZ) suggests a close-to-linear or linear CCNO chain. The CCN bending potential in CF3CNO was explored at the CCSD(T)(fc)/cc-pVTZ level, with the results suggesting that CF3CNO exhibits strong quasi-symmetric top behavior with a barrier to linearity of 174 cm(-1). Since both isomerization and dimerization are feasible loss processes for this unstable molecule, the relative stability of CF3CNO with respect to the known cyanate (CF3OCN), isocyanate (CF3NCO), and fulminate (CF3ONC) isomers and the mechanism of the dimerization process to the ring furoxan and other isomers were studied with density functional theory.     

Pulse electrodeposition and characterization of non-continuous,multi-element-doped hydroxyapatite bioceramic coatings

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - Multi-element-modified bioactive hydroxyapatite (mHAp) coatings were developed onto commercial titanium alloy material (Ti6Al4V) in clusters. The coatings...     

Richardson Extrapolation combined with the sequential splitting procedure and the <Emphasis Type="Italic">θ</Emphasis>-method

Initial value problems for systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) are solved numerically by using a combination of (a) the θ-method, (b) the sequential splitting procedure and (c) Richardson Extrapolation. Stability results for the combined numerical method are proved. It is shown, by using numerical experiments, that if the combined numerical method is stable, then it behaves as a second-order method.     

A lanthanide nanoparticle-based luminescent probe for folic acid

We report on a novel luminescent method for the detection of folic acid (FA), a member of the vitamin B family. Y₂O₃ nanoparticles were doped with europium(III) ions and surface-modified with captopril. Their fluorescence is quenched by FA, and intensity is a function of folic acid concentration in the 0.1 – 40 μM concentration range. The detection limit is 83 nM of FA at pH 7 and room temperature.

Consistency Analysis of Operator Splitting Methods for C<Subscript>0</Subscript>-Semigroups Expression

The consistency of different splitting schemes has mostly been studied for bounded operators by means of the traditional Taylor series expansion. In this paper second order of consistency is proved for the symmetrically weighted sequential (SWS) splitting and the Marchuk-Strang (MS) splitting for unbounded generators of strongly continuous semigroups.     

Estimation of the vanishing point in camera-mirror scenes from video

Knowledge of the position of the vanishing point is the key for geometrical modeling of an image containing a reflective surface or cast shadows. Such an image can be analyzed as two subimages that constitute a stereo pair. For this model-estimation task an automatic method is presented that utilizes motion statistics and the statistical properties of image points for the determination of point correspondence and the subsequent estimation of vanishing point position, optimized by use of a goodness-of-fit function. We show that this approach gives robust results in widely different real-world environments, even when the correspondence is corrupted with considerable amounts of noise.     

Numerical solution of the Maxwell equations in time-varying media using Magnus expansion

For the Maxwell equations in time-dependent media only finite difference schemes with time-dependent conductivity are known. In this paper we present a numerical scheme based on the Magnus expansion and operator splitting that can handle time-dependent permeability and permittivity too. We demonstrate our results with numerical tests.