Dysprosium Doped Dielectric Materials for Sintering in Reducing Atmospheres

Substitution of Dy rare earth ions was studied in Ba(Ti,Zr)O₃ dielectric materials, using thermogravimetry, X-ray diffraction and dielectric measurements. Dy³⁺ ions enter both the A- and the B-sites of the perovskite structure, however, the solubility on B-sites is up to 9 mol %, whereas it is only 2.5 mol% on A-sites. Dy can be easily shifted from A- to B-sites and back, using Ba or Ti excess in the material. Dy³⁺ on B-sites is a strong electron acceptor. Dy doped dielectric materials are cofired with Ni electrodes in reducing atmosphere to highly insulating BME multilayer capacitors.     

Influence of titanium dioxide pigments on the optical properties of polycarbonate and polypropylene for diode laser wavelengths

In laser transmission welding of polymers, additives and colorants could influence the welding result. In this work, polypropylene and polycarbonate probes colored with titanium dioxide (TiO₂) pigments of various concentrations are investigated. The probes are produced using an extrusion process to obtain a homogeneous distribution of colorants. The TiO₂ pigments change the optical properties of the polymers considerably. The measured reflectance increases with increasing pigment load while the transmittance decreases. From the measured data of transmittance, reflectance, and collimated transmittance, the scattering, the absorption coefficient, and the anisotropy factors are calculated. It is shown that the scattering coefficient at 1530 nm (laser) wavelength is smaller than for 968 nm, while the absorption coefficient is negligible for both wavelengths. Scattering coefficient and anisotropy factor are used to simulate the propagation of the laser radiation in the polymers. The influence of the scattering process on the beam propagation is represented by the change of the power density distribution. It is shown that the maximum intensity of the distribution is reduced more than the transmittance with increasing pigment concentration. The effect is higher for 968 than for 1530 nm wavelength making the larger wavelength more favorable for transmission welding. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40073.     

The evaluation of liposome-water partitioning of 8-hydroxyquinolines and their copper complexes

Bioavailability and toxicity of mixtures are urgent research issues, but usually mixtures of exclusively organic chemicals or exclusively metals are investigated. In our study, we explored the role of combinations of hydrophobic ionogenic organic compounds (HIOCs) with copper (Cu2+)for uptake and bioavailability of metals and hydrophobic metal complexes in an in vitro membrane system. We investigated the influence of the interactions of copper and 8-hydroxyquinolines, both components used in formulations of pesticides, on their partitioning into liposomes, which are model systems for biological membranes and are composed of lipid bilayers made of phosphatidylcholine. The test set of compounds comprised the parent compound 8-hydroxyquinoline and 8-hydroxyquinolines with hydrophobic (e.g., 5-chloro-8-hydroxyquinoline, 5,7-dichloro-8-hydroxyquinoline, 5,7-dibromo-8-hydroxyquinoline) and with hydrophilic (e.g., 8-hydroxyquinoline-5-sulfonic acid) substituents. Hydrophobic 8-hydroxyquinolines facilitate the passive uptake of copper into phospholipid bilayers by complex formation. Not only the neutral species of the ligands and their neutral copper ligand complexes are significantly taken up into the membrane, but also the cationic and anionic species of the ligands and the cationic complexes. The neutral, anionic, and cationic species of 8-hydroxyquinoline and the hydrophobic substituted 8-hydroxyquinolines exhibit linear correlations between their logarithmic liposome-water partitioning coefficients (log Klipw) and the logarithmic octanol-water partitioning coefficients of their neutral species (log Kow, neutral). The neutral species show the strongest partitioning followed by the anionic and cationic species. The associated quantitative structure activity relationships describing the dependency of log Klipw of the various species from log Kow, neutral of the neutral ligand species have slopes between 0.9 and 1. In contrast, the partitioning of the neutral and cationic copper-8-hydroxyquinoline complexes is dependent on several factors including the hydrophobicity of the ligand, the effective molecular size, and the polarization of the complex itself. In consequence, there is no linear relationship between log Klipw of these complexes and log Kow of the neutral species of their ligands. The complexes with very bulky substituents showed a reduced uptake. The Klipw of the nominally neutral complexes, where Cu2+ is coordinated with two ligands, were a factor three to four higher than the Klipw of the positively charged complexes with only one ligand. Although liposome-water partitioning merely describes one element of the uptake process into biological membranes, it is a key process for bioavailability of hydrophobic compounds and, presumably, also plays a crucial role for biological uptake of the described metal organic complexes.     

Diagnostic criteria patterns of U.S. children with Metabolic Syndrome: NHANES 1999–2002

Background  

As childhood obesity increases in the U.S., the Metabolic Syndrome (MS) can be assumed to be increasing in the pediatric population as well. To date, there is lack of information on the most prevalent risk factors of MS in children and the patterns of risk factors present in children met the criteria for MS.     

CRISPR/Cas13a‐Powered Electrochemical Microfluidic Biosensor for Nucleic Acid Amplification‐Free miRNA Diagnostics

Noncoding small RNAs, such as microRNAs, are becoming the biomarkers of choice for multiple diseases in clinical diagnostics. A dysregulation of these microRNAs can be associated with many different diseases, such as cancer, dementia, and cardiovascular conditions. The key for effective treatment is an accurate initial diagnosis at an early stage, improving the patient's survival chances. In this work, the first clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas13a‐powered microfluidic, integrated electrochemical biosensor for the on‐site detection of microRNAs is introduced. Through this unique combination, the quantification of the potential tumor markers microRNA miR‐19b and miR‐20a is realized without any nucleic acid amplification. With a readout time of 9 min and an overall process time of less than 4 h, a limit of detection of 10 pm is achieved, using a measuring volume of less than 0.6 µL. Furthermore, the feasibility of the biosensor platform to detect miR‐19b in serum samples of children, suffering from brain cancer, is demonstrated. The validation of the obtained results with a standard quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction method shows the ability of the electrochemical CRISPR‐powered system to be a low‐cost, easily scalable, and target amplification‐free tool for nucleic acid based diagnostics.     

BROCCOLI: overlapping and outlier-robust biclustering through proximal stochastic gradient descent

Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery - Matrix tri-factorization subject to binary constraints is a versatile and powerful framework for the simultaneous clustering of observations and features, also...     

Learning probability distributions in continuous evolutionary algorithms – a comparative review

We present a comparative review of Evolutionary Algorithms that generate new population members by sampling a probability distributionconstructed during the optimization process. We present a unifying formulation for five such algorithms that enables us to characterize them based on the parametrization of the probability distribution, the learning methodology, and the use of historical information.The algorithms are evaluated on a number of test functions in order to assess their relative strengths and weaknesses. This comparative reviewhelps to identify areas of applicability for the algorithms and to guidefuture algorithmic developments.