Theoretical description of pressure shifts and quenching of excited atomic states in liquid helium

The pressure dependence of the linewidth and shift for the 2 ³S→2 ³P and 3 ³S→2 ³P transitions observed in electron-bombarded liquid helium is calculated by applying static line-broadening theory within the framework of a theoretical model. The calculated pressure shift, width and asymmetry are in good agreement with recent measurements over the pressure range of 1 to 25 atm. A new mechanism is proposed for the strong pressure quenching observed for several atomic and molecular emission lines.     

A possible interaction between gravity and the electric field

A charged parallel plate capacitor contains less electric energy when its plates are oriented parallel to a gravitational field than it contains when its plates are oriented perpendicular to the same field. If this energy difference can be detected by an observer located inside the field, then the capacitor should experience a torque until the electric field is perpendicular to the radial direction.     

STUDIES OF ADHESION OF METAL PARTICLES TO SILICA PARTICLES BASED ON ZETA POTENTIAL MEASUREMENTS

The zeta-potentials of silica, copper, platinum and gold particles have been measured as a function of pH. The isoelectric points were found to be at pH 3.0, 5.8, 3.0 and 3.5, respectively. In the pH range 3.0 to 5.8 copper and silica particles are oppositely charged and accordingly the coating of silica with copper particles could be demonstrated. In the case of gold and platinum the sign of the charge is such that direct adhesion to silica particles cannot be expected and this was also demonstrated in the case of platinum.     

Nano-enabled biosensing systems for intelligent healthcare: towards COVID-19 management

Biosensors are emerging as efficient (sensitive and selective) and affordable analytical diagnostic tools for early-stage disease detection, as required for personalized health wellness management. Low-level detection of a targeted disease biomarker (pM level) has emerged extremely useful to evaluate the progression of disease under therapy. Such collected bioinformatics and its multi-aspects-oriented analytics is in demand to explore the effectiveness of a prescribed treatment, optimize therapy, and correlate biomarker level with disease pathogenesis. Owing to nanotechnology-enabled advancements in sensing unit fabrication, device integration, interfacing, packaging, and sensing performance at point-of-care (POC) has rendered diagnostics according to the requirements of disease management and patient disease profile i.e. in a personalized manner. Efforts are continuously being made to promote the state of art biosensing technology as a next-generation non-invasive disease diagnostics methodology. Keeping this in view, this progressive opinion article describes personalized health care management related analytical tools which can provide access to better health for everyone, with overreaching aim to manage healthy tomorrow timely. Considering accomplishments and predictions, such affordable intelligent diagnostics tools are urgently required to manage COVID-19 pandemic, a life-threatening respiratory infectious disease, where a rapid, selective and sensitive detection of human beta severe acute respiratory system coronavirus (SARS-COoV-2) protein is the key factor.     

On the Location of Roots of Independence Polynomials

The independence polynomial of a graph G is the function i(G, x) = _k0 i _k x ^k, where i _k is the number of independent sets of vertices in G of cardinality k. We prove that real roots of independence polynomials are dense in (–, 0], while complex roots are dense in , even when restricting to well covered or comparability graphs. Throughout, we exploit the fact that independence polynomials are essentially closed under graph composition.     

Matched-field depth estimation for active sonar

This work concerns the problem of estimating the depth of a submerged scatterer in a shallow-water ocean by using an active sonar and a horizontal receiver array. As in passive matched-field processing (MFP) techniques, numerical modeling of multipath propagation is used to facilitate localization. However, unlike passive MFP methods where estimation of source range is critically dependent on relative modal phase modeling, in active sonar source range is approximately known from travel-time measurements. Thus the proposed matched-field depth estimation (MFDE) method does not require knowledge of the complex relative multipath amplitudes which also depend on the unknown scatterer characteristics. Depth localization is achieved by modeling depth-dependent relative delays and elevation angle spreads between multipaths. A maximum likelihood depth estimate is derived under the assumption that returns from a sequence of pings are uncorrelated and the scatterer is at constant depth. The Cramér-Rao lower bound on depth estimation mean-square-error is computed and compared with Monte Carlo simulation results for a typical range-dependent, shallow-water Mediterranean environment. Depth estimation performance to within 10% of the water column depth is predicted at signal-to-noise ratios of greater than 10 dB. Real data results are reported for depth estimation of an echo repeater to within 10-m accuracy in this same shallow water environment.