Quantum Sensing in a Physiological‐Like Cell Niche Using Fluorescent Nanodiamonds Embedded in Electrospun Polymer Nanofibers

Fluorescent nanodiamonds (fNDs) containing nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers are promising candidates for quantum sensing in biological environments. This work describes the fabrication and implementation of electrospun poly lactic‐co‐glycolic acid (PLGA) nanofibers embedded with fNDs for optical quantum sensing in an environment, which recapitulates the nanoscale architecture and topography of the cell niche. A protocol that produces uniformly dispersed fNDs within electrospun nanofibers is demonstrated and the resulting fibers are characterized using fluorescent microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) and longitudinal spin relaxometry results for fNDs and embedded fNDs are compared. A new approach for fast detection of time varying magnetic fields external to the fND embedded nanofibers is demonstrated. ODMR spectra are successfully acquired from a culture of live differentiated neural stem cells functioning as a connected neural network grown on fND embedded nanofibers. This work advances the current state of the art in quantum sensing by providing a versatile sensing platform that can be tailored to produce physiological‐like cell niches to replicate biologically relevant growth environments and fast measurement protocols for the detection of co‐ordinated endogenous signals from clinically relevant populations of electrically active neuronal circuits.     

On the effect of spatial variances in historical rainfall time series to CSO performance evaluation.

Historical, high-resolution rain series are the backbone of modern combined sewer overflow (CSO) structure design. These rain series are the input to the computational estimation of the performance of the measures with respect to CSO pollution abatement. However, those historical precipitation measurements are available at only a few locations. Frequently rain series have to be used from gauging stations at a significant distance. In order to judge and to compensate for this influence an estimate between rain characteristics and combined sewer outflow (CSO) performance indicators would be useful. In this paper such correlations have been sought for a collection of 37 rain series covering large areas of Europe. It was found that the mean annual rain volume can explain most of the variances for the performance indicators Number of overflows and CSO volume. For explaining the spatial differences in the efficiency of the CSO structure another rain characteristic, i.e. the maximum event with a return period of one year, is to be used.     

Conventional Electron Microscopy and Electron Holography of Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells are a promising route towards large‐area and low‐price photovoltaic systems. The devices are composed of at least two layers: the hole‐transport layer and the electron‐transport layer. The light absorption can occur in one or both layers. At the interface of the layers the excitons are separated into charge carriers, and every layer deals with one type of carrier. Higher efficiencies of the separation process can be obtained by using a mixed layer containing both materials to obtain a very high interface area. Although the structure of the mixed layers used plays a crucial role for the device performance, until now the morphologies have not been elucidated. In order to correlate physical and optical findings with structure and morphology for the materials in question, electron microscopy experiments were performed on the single components as well as on the layer systems. The conventional electron microscope is a poor phase microscope. As consequence, weak‐phase objects like organic molecules have to be stained or imaged under strong defocus to produce an observable contrast. Artifacts caused by chemical staining and the appearance of Fresnel diffraction using the defocus technique represent the main problems of conventional microscopy. These artifacts can be avoided using electron holography. Holograms of ultrathin sections of thin layers composed of organic dye molecules were recorded. Subsequently, the phase images were reconstructed. In this manner, we succeeded in obtaining high‐contrast electron micrographs without applying staining or defocus. In addition, holograms of crystalline C₆₀ and zinc phthalocyanine were successfully recorded. Holography has been shown to be a useful tool to image beam‐sensitive and weak‐phase objects without artifacts.     

Test Case Generation as an AI Planning Problem

While Artificial Intelligence techniques have been applied to a variety of software engineering applications, the area of automated software testing remains largely unexplored. Yet, test cases for certain types of systems (e.g., those with command language interfaces and transaction based systems) are similar to plans. We have exploited this similarity by constructing an automated test case generator with an AI planning system at its core. We compared the functionality and output of two systems, one based on Software Engineering techniques and the other on planning, for a real application: the StorageTek robot tape library command language. From this, we showed that AI planning is a viable technique for test case generation and that the two approaches are complementary in their capabilities.     

THERMODYNAMICS OF ASPHALTENE PRECIPITATION AND DISSOLUTION INVESTIGATION OF TEMPERATURE AND SOLVENT EFFECTS

Petroleum asphaltenes have been precipitated in solvent mixtures of n-heptane and toluene at various temperatures, likewise n-heptane asphaltenes have been dissolved in under similar conditions. This give added evidence to apparent hysteresis phenomenon between the two processes. The Asphaltenes have been characterized showing that although data is scattered convergence to certain structural parameters as incipient flocculation is approached. The asphaltenes are seen to consist of an associating and a non-associating part. The solubility of asphaltenes has been correlated/modelled using the Flory-Huggins equation using two different terms for the Flory parameter. A process for evaluation of best choice of solubility parameter and molar volume for the asphaltenes is proposed. Dissolution processes are seen to be best fitted by the equations. Based on these findings the asphaltenes are proposed to be formed by a colloidal and a true solution part.