MEASUREMENT OF SPONTANEOUS EMISSION BRANCHING RATIOS IN MO(I) TRANSITIONS BY LASER-INDUCED SENSITIZED FLUORESCENCE

I. TNTRODUCTIONThe emission spectroscopic method is usually used to measure spontaneous emission branching ratios. As emission spectra cannot be detected in atomic beams, the laser-induced fluorescence or ion detection method is often used. When the fluorescence method is used to measure branching ratios, it is usually necessary to detect

THE INFLUENCE OF CRYSTAL-FIELD AND COVALENT CHARACTERISTICS ON THE ELECTRONIC-TRANSITION EMISSION OF EU-2+ ION

In most cases the luminescence of Eu~(2+) consists of a d-f broad-band emission, in some particular hosts, however, Eu~(2+) can also give out f-f narrow-line emission. There are two factors of importance here: the first is the strength of the crystal-field

Three dimensional fluorescence excitation-emission on matrix spectrum of dissolved organic substance in marine microalgaes growth process

The three-dimensional fluorescence spectrum was used to detect the changes in dissolved organic substances from the cultured Skeletonema costatum, Alexandrium tamarense, Alexandrium mimutum, Scrippsiella trochodea, Prorocentrum donghaiense and Prorocentrum micans. The result indicates that all of the microalgaes can produce FDOM in the growth courses. Diatom such as Skeletonema costatum can produce humic-like FDOM. However dinoflagellate can produce protein-like FDOM at exponential growth phase. When the algae grows into decadency phase, the intensity of humic-like and protein-like fluorescence augments rapidly, which may be due to a mass of FDOM realeased by the old or dead cell fragmentation and the degradation of bacteria by using non-FDOM. The fluorescent intensity of Alexandrium tamarense, Alexandrium mimutum, Prorocentrum donghaiense and Prorocentrum micans can reduce at anaphase of decadency phase because of the degradation of bacteria and light. The same genus of algae can produce similar FDOM, for example: Alexandrium tamarense, and Alexandrium mimutum, Prorocentrum donghaiense and Prorocentrum micans, but the positions of the fluorescence peaks are different.

Effects of forage composition and growing season on methane emission from sheep in the Inner Mongolia steppe of China

Understanding the effects of dietary composition on methane (CH4) production of sheep can help us to understand grassland degradation resulting in an increase of CH4 emission from ruminant livestock and its resulting significance affecting CH4 source/sink in the grazing ecosystem. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of forage composition in the diet of sheep in July and August on CH4 production by sheep in the Inner Mongolia steppe. The four diet treatments were: (1) Leymus chinensis and Cleistogenes squarrosa (LC), (2) Leymus chinensis, Cleistogenes squarrosa and concentrate supplementation (LCC), (3) Artemisia frigida and Cleistogenes squarrosa (AC), and (4) Artemisia frigida, Cleistogenes squarrosa and concentrate supplementation (ACC). CH4 production was significantly lower in July than in August (31.4 and 36.2 g per sheep-unit per day, respectively). The daily average CH4 production per unit of digestive dry matter (DM), organic matter (OM) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) increased by 10.9, 11.2 and 42.1% for the AC diet compared with the LC diet, respectively. Although concentrate supplementation in both the AC and LC diets increased total CH4 production per sheep per day, it improved sheep productivity and decreased CH4 production by 14.8, 12.5 and 14.8% per unit of DM, OM and NDF digested by the sheep, respectively. Our results suggested that in degraded grassland CH4 emission from sheep was increased and concentrate supplementation increased diet use efficiency. Sheep-grazing ecosystem seems to be a source of CH4 when the stocking rate is over 0.5 sheep-units ha(-1) during the growing season in the Inner Mongolia steppe.

The Three-Dimensional Interpretation of a Class of Simple Line-Drawings

We provide a theory of the three-dimensional interpretation of a class of line-drawings called p-images, which are interpreted by the human vision system as parallelepipeds ("boxes"). Despite their simplicity, p-images raise a number of interesting vision questions: *Why are p-images seen as three-dimensional objects? Why not just as flatimages? *What are the dimensions and pose of the perceived objects? *Why are some p-images interpreted as rectangular boxes, while others are seen as skewed, even though there is no obvious distinction between the images? *When p-images are rotated in three dimensions, why are the image-sequences perceived as distorting objects---even though structure-from-motion would predict that rigid objects would be seen? *Why are some three-dimensional parallelepipeds seen as radically different when viewed from different viewpoints? We show that these and related questions can be answered with the help of a single mathematical result and an associated perceptual principle. An interesting special case arises when there are right angles in the p-image. This case represents a singularity in the equations and is mystifying from the vision point of view. It would seem that (at least in this case) the vision system does not follow the ordinary rules of geometry but operates in accordance with other (and as yet unknown) principles.

Imaging of three-dimensional objects in emission electron microscopy

Under investigation by emission electron microscopy, the shape and size of three-dimensional objects are distorted because of the appearance of a characteristic potential relief and a possible contact potential difference between the particles and the substrate. An estimation of these effects for spherical particles is made. It is shown that the apparent size of particles observed in an emission electron microscope (EEM) could be increased as well as decreased depending on the relation between the work functions of the particle and the substrate. The corresponding formulae are given and several possibilities are shown which permit us to determine from the EEM image the real size of particles and their work function relative to the substrate.

On-line concentration of proteins in pressurized capillary electrochromatography coupled with electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry

Pressurized capillary electrochromatography (pCEC) and electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) have been hyphenated for protein analysis. Taken cytochrome c, lysozyme, and insulin as samples, the limits of detection (LODs) for absolute concentrations are 10(-11) mol (signal-to-noise ratio S/N = 3) with relative standard deviations (RSDs) of retention time and peak area, respectively, of less than 1.7% and 4.8%. In order to improve the detection sensitivity, on-line concentration by field-enhanced sample-stacking effect and chromatographic zone-sharpening effect has been developed, and parameters affecting separation and detection, such as pH and electrolyte concentration in the mobile phase, separation voltage, as well as enrichment voltage and time, have been studied systematically. Under the optimized conditions, the LODs of the three proteins could be decreased up to 100-fold. In addition, the feasibility of such techniques has been further demonstrated by the analysis of modified insulins at a concentration of 20 mu g/mL.

Evolution feature oriented model driven product line engineering approach for synergistic and dynamic service evolution in Clouds: four kinds of schema.

The proposed research will focus on developing a novel approach to solve Software Service Evolution problems in Computing Clouds. The approach will support dynamic evolution of the software service in clouds via a set of discovered evolution patterns. An initial survey informed us that such an approach does not exist yet and is in urgent need. Evolution Requirement can be classified into evolution features; researchers can describe the whole requirement by using evolution feature typology, the typology will define the relation and dependency between each features. After the evolution feature typology has been constructed, evolution model will be created to make the evolution more specific. Aspect oriented approach can be used for enhance evolution feature-model modularity. Aspect template code generation technique will be used for model transformation in the end. Product Line Engineering contains all the essential components for driving the whole evolution process.

Quantum Flows as Markovian Limit of Emission, Absorption and Scattering Interactions

Gough, John, (2004) 'Quantum Flows as Markovian Limit of Emission, Absorption and Scattering Interactions', Communications in Mathematical Physics 254 pp.498-512 RAE2008

The Impact of Sunspots on the Interpretation of Coronal Observations of the O VI Doublet

Morgan, Huw; Habbal, S. R., 'The impact of sunspots on the interpretation of coronal observations of the OVI doublet', The Astrophysical Journal (2005) 630(2) pp.L189-L192 RAE2008

Protein kinase C regulation of cell spreading in the molluscan Biomphalaria glabrata embryonic (Bge) cell line

Judith E. Humphries, Leah Elizondo and Timothy P. Yoshino (2001). Protein kinase C regulation of cell spreading in the molluscan Biomphalaria glabrata embryonic (Bge) cell line. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Molecular Cell Research, 1540(3), 243-252. Sponsorship: National Institutes of Health AI 15503 RAE2008

A Two-Tiered On-Line Server-Side Bandwidth Reservation Framework for the Real-Time Delivery of Multiple Video Streams

The advent of virtualization and cloud computing technologies necessitates the development of effective mechanisms for the estimation and reservation of resources needed by content providers to deliver large numbers of video-on-demand (VOD) streams through the cloud. Unfortunately, capacity planning for the QoS-constrained delivery of a large number of VOD streams is inherently difficult as VBR encoding schemes exhibit significant bandwidth variability. In this paper, we present a novel resource management scheme to make such allocation decisions using a mixture of per-stream reservations and an aggregate reservation, shared across all streams to accommodate peak demands. The shared reservation provides capacity slack that enables statistical multiplexing of peak rates, while assuring analytically bounded frame-drop probabilities, which can be adjusted by trading off buffer space (and consequently delay) and bandwidth. Our two-tiered bandwidth allocation scheme enables the delivery of any set of streams with less bandwidth (or equivalently with higher link utilization) than state-of-the-art deterministic smoothing approaches. The algorithm underlying our proposed frame-work uses three per-stream parameters and is linear in the number of servers, making it particularly well suited for use in an on-line setting. We present results from extensive trace-driven simulations, which confirm the efficiency of our scheme especially for small buffer sizes and delay bounds, and which underscore the significant realizable bandwidth savings, typically yielding losses that are an order of magnitude or more below our analytically derived bounds.

The Role of Edges and Line-Ends in Illusory Contour Formation

Illusory contours can be induced along directions approximately collinear to edges or approximately perpendicular to the ends of lines. Using a rating scale procedure we explored the relation between the two types of inducers by systematically varying the thickness of inducing elements to result; in varying amounts of "edge-like" or "line-like" induction. Inducers for om illusory figures consisted of concentric rings with arcs missing. Observers judged the clarity and brightness of illusory figures as the number of arcs, their thicknesses, and spacings were parametrically varied. Degree of clarity and amount of induced brightness were both found to be inverted-U functions of the number of arcs. These results mandate that any valid model of illusory contour formation must account for interference effects between parallel lines or between those neural units responsible for completion of boundary signals in directions perpendicular to the ends of thin lines. Line width was found to have an effect on both clarity and brightness, a finding inconsistent with those models which employ only completion perpendicular to inducer orientation.

The Role of Edges and Line-Ends in Illusory Contour Formation

Illusory contours can be induced along direction approximately collinear to edges or approximately perpendicular to the ends of lines. Using a rating scale procedure we explored the relation between the two types of inducers by systematically varying the thickness of inducing elements to result in varying amounts of "edge-like" or "line-like" induction. Inducers for our illusory figures consisted of concentric rings with arcs missing. Observers judged the clarity and brightness of illusory figures as the number of arcs, their thicknesses, and spacings were parametrically varied. Degree of clarity and amount of induced brightness were both found to be inverted-U functions of the number of arcs. These results mandate that any valid model of illusory contour formation must account for interference effects between parallel lines or between those neural units responsible for completion of boundary signals in directions perpendicular to the ends of thin lines. Line width was found to have an efFect on both clarity and brightness, a finding inconsistent with those models which employ only completion perpendicular to inducer orientation.

The development of new methods for high resolution radio astronomy imaging

Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) polarisation observations of the relativistic jets from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) allow the magnetic field environment around the jet to be probed. In particular, multi-wavelength observations of AGN jets allow the creation of Faraday rotation measure maps which can be used to gain an insight into the magnetic field component of the jet along the line of sight. Recent polarisation and Faraday rotation measure maps of many AGN show possible evidence for the presence of helical magnetic fields. The detection of such evidence is highly dependent both on the resolution of the images and the quality of the error analysis and statistics used in the detection. This thesis focuses on the development of new methods for high resolution radio astronomy imaging in both of these areas. An implementation of the Maximum Entropy Method (MEM) suitable for multi-wavelength VLBI polarisation observations is presented and the advantage in resolution it possesses over the CLEAN algorithm is discussed and demonstrated using Monte Carlo simulations. This new polarisation MEM code has been applied to multi-wavelength imaging of the Active Galactic Nuclei 0716+714, Mrk 501 and 1633+382, in each case providing improved polarisation imaging compared to the case of deconvolution using the standard CLEAN algorithm. The first MEM-based fractional polarisation and Faraday-rotation VLBI images are presented, using these sources as examples. Recent detections of gradients in Faraday rotation measure are presented, including an observation of a reversal in the direction of a gradient further along a jet. Simulated observations confirming the observability of such a phenomenon are conducted, and possible explanations for a reversal in the direction of the Faraday rotation measure gradient are discussed. These results were originally published in Mahmud et al. (2013). Finally, a new error model for the CLEAN algorithm is developed which takes into account correlation between neighbouring pixels. Comparison of error maps calculated using this new model and Monte Carlo maps show striking similarities when the sources considered are well resolved, indicating that the method is correctly reproducing at least some component of the overall uncertainty in the images. The calculation of many useful quantities using this model is demonstrated and the advantages it poses over traditional single pixel calculations is illustrated. The limitations of the model as revealed by Monte Carlo simulations are also discussed; unfortunately, the error model does not work well when applied to compact regions of emission.