Counting of single protein molecules at interfaces and application of this technique in early-stage diagnosis

The fluorescence-based detection and counting of single protein molecules after specific binding to antibodies at interfaces is presented. A diode laser was used as the excitation source. The unspecific binding at the interface has been reduced to a level of only 0.1% of the maximum signal level. At present, the detection limit of this molecule-counting process is in the range of 10(-17) mol/L, and the dynamic range of the signal corresponds to 7 orders of magnitude of antigen concentration, but these values are not limiting. As a preliminary application in early-stage diagnosis, we have investigated the detection of a single cardiac actin molecule in human plasma, which is of interest in myocardial infarction diagnosis.     

Effects of thermal annealing on the optical characteristics of k -na + waveguides

We present a systematic study of the changes induced in the refractive-index profile of different sets of K -Na + ion-exchanged waveguides on soda-lime and BK7 substrates because of thermal annealing in the presence or absence of salt vapors. The concentration of potassium is recovered by secondary ion mass spectrometry, and the propagation losses are measured by means of the three-prism configuration.     

Sensitivity of expected exceedance rate of SDOF-system response to statistical uncertainties of loading and system parameters

The effects of the statistical uncertainties of the loading and system parameters on the mean exceedance rate of a particular threshold are investigated for a linear SDOF-system with viscous damping. For this purpose the structural loading is described by the well-known stationary Kanai-Tajimi-earthquake model. The analysis is simplified by utilizing an approximate solution for the threshold-crossing rate, for which the error with respect to the exact solution is shown to be small. Each of the parameters involved in the expression for the mean exceedance rate of the stationary response of the structure is considered a random variable. The respective effects of the statistical uncertainties of the parameters on the threshold-crossing rate, as expressed by the first- and second moments, are shown explicitely in the numerical examples.     

Nuclear susceptibility of liquid He3—I

An accurate study of the nuclear molar susceptibility of liquid He ³ has been made. Particularly emphasized was the comparison of in the liquid with that in solid He ³ . The experimental results of this work define a three-dimensional surface T/C versus temperatureT and molar volumeV between 0.35 and 2.2° K and between 26 and 37 cm ³ /mole. HereC is the molar Curie constant of solid He ³ , assumed to beN _A µ ² /k _B T, where is the nuclear magnetic moment and N _A Avogadro's number. The measurements were accomplished using a carefully designed pulsed NMR set, and sample-and-hold circuitry with a digital voltmeter for readout. Most of the measurements were made at fixed temperature relative to a sample of bcc solid He ³ , usually at a density of 22.50 cm ³ /mole. These data were complemented by measurement of versusT at fixed pressure. Except at the highest temperatures, the scatter in the values was about 0.3%, and the results are estimated to be accurate within ±0.5%. At sufficiently high temperatures, the susceptibility is found to tend asymptotically towards Curie's law by comparison with solid He ³ . The deviation from Curie's law, to temperatures near 0.5° K, could be empirically written as (1–T/C)=bT ^d whereb andd are density-dependent parameters. Comparison with theories and previous measurements of the nuclear susceptibility are made. Below 1° K, the present results are about midway between those of Beal and Hatton ⁹ and those of Thomson, Meyer, and Adams. ⁸ Research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and from the AROD. The results have been presented as an Abstract inBull. Am. Phys. Soc. 14, 601 (1969), submitted in partial fulfillment for the Ph.D. in physics by J. R. Thompson, May 1969.     

Nonlinear magnetic field solutions based on a vector magnetic potential

The earlier successful techniques for numerical solution of magnetic field problems required defining a field quantity and magnetic permeability over the problem grid model. Later improved but limited techniques were introduced whereby it was necessary to define only a field quantity, usually a potentia function, over the grid because the magnetic material characteristics were incorporated directly into the equations. The work presented in this paper represents a culmination of these latter efforts in that technique is presented whereby the general three-dimensional magnetic field boundary value problem with current regions can be solved numerically.     

Development of artificial neural networks for real time, in situ ellipsometry data reduction

Development of real time in situ monitoring and control of thin film depositions using ellipsometry requires both data acquisition and processing to be rapid. Present speeds of measurement and computation of basic parameters, Ψ and Δ, are sufficient for data acquisition which is essentially real time. However, computation of film parameters, such as thickness and optical properties, generally cannot keep up with the incoming data and must be performed in a batch mode after the deposition.

This work describes the development of enhanced, high speed data reduction algorithms using artificial neural networks (ANN). The networks are trained using computed data and subsequently give values of film parameters in the millisecond time regime. The ANN outputs are used as initial estimates in a variably damped least squares algorithm for accuracy improvement. The combination of these two algorithms provides very accurate solutions in 75 ms per point on a DEC VAX 8800 multiprocessor system running at a combined 12 Mips. This speed is suitable for real time film monitoring and control for growth rates up to 10 nm per second. Results for fixed angle of incidence, single wavelength, in situ data for Ni deposited on BK7 substrates are presented.