Quantitative spectroscopic analysis of heterogeneous mixtures: the correction of multiplicative effects caused by variations in physical properties of samples

Spectral measurements of complex heterogeneous types of mixture samples are often affected by significant multiplicative effects resulting from light scattering, due to physical variations (e.g. particle size and shape, sample packing and sample surface, etc.) inherent within the individual samples. Therefore, the separation of the spectral contributions due to variations in chemical compositions from those caused by physical variations is crucial to accurate quantitative spectroscopic analysis of heterogeneous samples. In this work, an improved strategy has been proposed to estimate the multiplicative parameters accounting for multiplicative effects in each measured spectrum, and hence mitigate the detrimental influence of multiplicative effects on the quantitative spectroscopic analysis of heterogeneous samples. The basic assumption of the proposed method is that light scattering due to physical variations has the same effects on the spectral contributions of each of the spectroscopically active chemical component in the same sample mixture. Based on this underlying assumption, the proposed method realizes the efficient estimation of the multiplicative parameters by solving a simple quadratic programming problem. The performance of the proposed method has been tested on two publicly available benchmark data sets (i.e. near-infrared total diffuse transmittance spectra of four-component suspension samples and near infrared spectral data of meat samples) and compared with some empirical approaches designed for the same purpose. It was found that the proposed method provided appreciable improvement in quantitative spectroscopic analysis of heterogeneous mixture samples. The study indicates that accurate quantitative spectroscopic analysis of heterogeneous mixture samples can be achieved through the combination of spectroscopic techniques with smart modeling methodology

Is hyperuricemia an independent risk factor for new-onset chronic kidney disease?: a systematic review and meta-analysis based on observational cohort studies

This article discusses the role of interrogation in intelligence during the Second World War, and it focuses on the importance of culture in the collection of Human Intelligence in the European theatre of operation. It argues that cultural issues, including but not limited to language knowledge, provided an added value to interrogation, interviewing and questioning during and after the Second World War, for example through the employment of native speakers, in particular former refugees and enemy aliens. The article also highlights some of the flaws involved in this process, which led to bad prisoner handling and therefore bad intelligence collection. It also tries to complement archival sources with personal accounts and oral histories in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the role of the human being in the collection of intelligence through interrogation and questioning

Experimental Test of Bell inequalities with Six-Qubit Graph States

We report on the experimental realization of two different Bell inequality tests based on six-qubit linear-type and Y-shape graph states. For each of these states, the Bell inequalities tested are optimal in the sense that they provide the maximum violation among all Bell inequalities with stabilizing observables and possess the maximum resistance to noise.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Parametrically tunable soliton-induced resonant radiation by three-wave mixing

We show that a temporal soliton can induce resonant radiation by three-wave mixing nonlinearities. This constitutes a new class of resonant radiation whose spectral positions are parametrically tunable. The experimental verification is done in a periodically poled lithium niobate crystal, where a femtosecond near-IR soliton is excited and resonant radiation waves are observed exactly at the calculated soliton phase-matching wavelengths via the sum-and difference-frequency generation nonlinearities. This extends the supercontinuum bandwidth well into the mid IR to span 550-5000 nm, and the mid-IR edge is parametrically tunable over 1000 nm by changing the three-wave mixing phase-matching condition. The results are important for the bright and broadband supercontinuum generation and for the frequency comb generation in quadratic nonlinear microresonators

Increased nucleotide polymorphic changes in the 5'-untranslated region of δ-catenin (CTNND2) gene in prostate cancer

Cancer pathogenesis involves multiple genetic and epigenetic alterations, which result in oncogenic changes in gene expression. δ-Catenin (CTNND2) is overexpressed in cancer although the mechanisms of its upregulation are highly variable. Here we report that in prostate cancer the methylation of CpG islands in δ-catenin promoter was not a primary regulatory event. There was also no δ-catenin gene amplification. However, using Single-Strand onformation Polymorphism analysis, we observed the increased nucleotide changes in the 5'-untranslated region of δ-catenin gene in human prostate cancer. At least one such change (-9 G>A) is a true somatic point mutation associated with a high Gleason score, poorly differentiated prostatic adenocarcinoma. Laser capture microdissection coupled with PCR analyses detected the mutation only in cancerous but not in the adjacent benign prostatic tissues. Using chimeric genes encoding the luciferase reporter, we found that this mutation, but not a random mutation or a mutation that disrupts an upstream open reading frame, resulted in a remarkably higher expression and enzyme activity. This mutation did not affect transcriptional efficiency, suggesting that it promotes δ-catenin translation. This is the first report of δ-catenin gene mutation in cancer and supports the notion that multiple mechanisms contribute to its increased expression in carcinogenesis. Originally published ncogene, Vol. 28, No. 4, Jan 200