Backstepping in Infinite Dimension for a Class of Parabolic Distributed Parameter Systems

 In this paper a family of stabilizing boundary feedback control laws for a class of linear parabolic PDEs motivated by engineering applications is presented. The design procedure presented here can handle systems with an arbitrary finite number of open-loop unstable eigenvalues and is not restricted to a particular type of boundary actuation. Stabilization is achieved through the design of coordinate transformations that have the form of recursive relationships. The fundamental difficulty of such transformations is that the recursion has an infinite number of iterations. The problem of feedback gains growing unbounded as the grid becomes infinitely fine is resolved by a proper choice of the target system to which the original system is transformed. We show how to design coordinate transformations such that they are sufficiently regular (not continuous but L _∞). We then establish closed-loop stability, regularity of control, and regularity of solutions of the PDE. The result is accompanied by a simulation study for a linearization of a tubular chemical reactor around an unstable steady state. Date received: June 22, 2001. Date revised: January 17, 2002. RID="*" ID="*"This work was supported by grants from AFOSR, ONR, and NSF.     

Amorphous alloys resistant to corrosion in artificial saliva solution

The tailoring of new corrosion-resistant alloys with specific properties has recently been performed mostly by the sputter deposition technique. The aim of this work was to investigate corrosion resistance of aluminum–tungsten (Al–W) amorphous alloys in artificial saliva solution, pH=5.5, based on the electrochemical methods of cyclic voltammetry and linear polarization. Thin alloy films were prepared on a sapphire substrate by magnetron codeposition. Completely amorphous films were obtained in the Al₈₀W₂₀–Al₆₇W₃₃ composition range. Amorphous Al–W alloys exhibit very high corrosion resistance due to their homogeneous single-phase nature. The passive films spontaneously formed at their surface are uniform with characteristics of an insulator film and prevent corrosion progression in the bulk in a very demanding oral environment. The mechanism of increasing resistivity of Al–W alloys to pitting corrosion and generalized corrosion has been discussed in the view of increasing tungsten content in the alloy. Considering these exceptional corrosion properties and microhardness which falls in the range 7.5±1.6 Pa, Al–W alloys represent promising materials for dental applications.     

Biology of TiO2-oligonucleotide nanocomposites

Emerging areas of nanotechnology hold the promise of overcoming the limitations of existing technologies for intracellular manipulation. These new developments provide approaches for the creation of chemical-biological hybrid nanocomposites that can be introduced into cells and subsequently used to initiate intracellular processes or biochemical reactions. Such nanocomposites would advance medical biotechnology, just as they are improving microarray technology and imaging in biology and medicine, and introducing new possibilities in chemistry and material sciences. Here we describe the behaviour of 45-A nanoparticles of titanium dioxide semiconductor combined with oligonucleotide DNA into nanocomposites in vivo and in vitro. These nanocomposites not only retain the intrinsic photocatalytic capacity of TiO2 and the bioactivity of the oligonucleotide DNA (covalently attached to the TiO2 nanoparticle), but also possess the chemically and biologically unique new property of a light-inducible nucleic acid endonuclease, which could become a new tool for gene therapy.     

Integration of electrokinetic-based multidimensional separation/concentration platform with electrospray ionization-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance-mass spectrometry for proteome analysis of Shewanella oneidensis

This work focuses on the development of a multidimensional electrokinetic-based separation/concentration platform coupled with electrospray ionization-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI-FTICR-MS) for achieving the high resolution and ultrasensitive analysis of complex protein/peptide mixtures. A microdialysis junction is employed as the interface for on-line combination of capillary isoelectric focusing (CIEF) with transient capillary isotachophoresis/zone electrophoresis (CITP/CZE) in an integrated platform. Besides the excellent resolving power afforded by both CIEF and CZE separations, the electrokinetic focusing/stacking effects of CIEF and CITP greatly enhance the dynamic range and detection sensitivity of MS for protein identification. The constructed multidimensional separation/concentration platform is demonstrated for the analysis of Shewanella oneidensis proteome, which has considerable implications toward the bioremediation of environmental pollutants. The electrokinetic-based platform offers the overall peak capacity comparable to those obtained using multidimensional chromatography systems, but with a much shorter run time and no need for column regeneration. Most importantly, a total of 1174 unique proteins, corresponding to 26.5% proteome coverage, are identified from the cytosolic fraction of S. oneidensis, while requiring <500 ng of proteolytic digest loaded in the CIEF capillary. The ultrasensitive capabilities of electrokinetic-based proteome approach are attributed to the concentration effect in CIEF, the electrokinetic stacking of CITP, the nanoscale peak volume in CZE, the "accurate mass tag" strategy for protein/peptide identification, and the high-sensitivity, high-resolution, and high-mass measurement accuracy of FTICR-MS.     

Two-point mid-range approximation enhanced recursive quadratic programming method

This research represents an attempt to combine good convergence properties of recursive quadratic programming methods with the benefits of mid-range approximations, initially developed in the field of structural optimization. In this paper, an optimization method based on Arora and coworkers PLBA (Pshenichny–Lim–Belegundu–Arora) algorithm is proposed in which, during the line search phase, cost and constraint functions are substituted by their two-point approximations using the Generalized Convex Approximation formulae of Chickermane and Gea. The results showed that the proposed optimization method preserves the reliability and accuracy of the recursive quadratic programming method while it might simultaneously reduce the computational effort for some problems. Therefore, the proposed optimization method may be taken as potentially suitable for general design optimization purposes.     

Analysis of gangliosides directly from thin-layer chromatography plates by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometry with a glycerol matrix

A novel method is presented for direct coupling of high-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) for the analysis of biomolecules. A first key feature is the use of a liquid matrix (glycerol), which provides a homogeneous wetting of the silica gel and a simple and fast MALDI preparation protocol. A second is the use of an Er:YAG infrared laser, which ablates layers of approximately 10-microm thickness of analyte-loaded silica gel and provides a soft desorption/ionization of even very labile analyte molecules. The orthogonal time-of-flight mass spectrometer employed in this study, finally provides a high accuracy of the mass determination, which is independent of any irregularity of the silica gel surface. The analytical potential of the method is demonstrated by the compositional mapping of a native GM3 (II(3)-alpha-Neu5Ac-LacCer) ganglioside mixture from cultured Chinese hamster ovary cells. The analysis is characterized by a high relative sensitivity, allowing the simultaneous detection of various major and minor GM3 species directly from individual HPTLC analyte bands. The lateral resolution of the direct HPTLC-MALDI-MS analysis is defined by the laser focus diameter of currently approximately 200 microm. This allows one to determine mobility profiles of individual species with a higher resolution than by reading off the chromatogram by optical absorption. The fluorescent dye primuline was, furthermore, successfully tested as a nondestructive, MALDI-compatible staining agent.     

Local charge transport in two-dimensional PbSe nanocrystal arrays studied by electrostatic force microscopy

Two-dimensional PbSe nanocrystal arrays on silicon nitride membranes were investigated using electrostatic force microscopy (EFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Changes in lattice and transport properties upon annealing in a vacuum were revealed. Local charge transport behavior was directly imaged by EFM and correlated to nanopatterns observed with TEM. Charge transport through nanochannels in complex two-dimensional nanocrystal networks was identified. Our results demonstrate the importance of measurements of local transport details complementary to the conventional current-voltage (I-V) measurements.     

Modelling of drying and rehydration of carrots using Peleg’s model

The drying and rehydration process of conventionally and organically cultivated carrots was studied and the resulting data were fitted to the Pelegs model. Carrots were fluid-bed and halogen dried and after that soaked in water at room temperature. The Pelegs model gave a good prediction of water removal and water uptake in all experiments (R>0,994). During the drying process the Pelegs rate constant (K₁) was affected by temperature. K₁ values decreased with the increase of the drying temperature. This relation was linear for fluid-bed drying and exponential for halogen drying, which implied a higher impact of the drying temperature on the dehydration kinetics during halogen drying. The lower K₁ values for fluid-bed drying suggested higher initial drying rates in comparison with halogen drying at all drying temperatures. The temperature dependence of 1/K₁ followed an Arrhenius-type relationship. Both Pelegs rehydration constants (K₁ and K₂) increased with the increase of the drying temperature. This implied regular decrease of initial rehydration rate and water uptake with the increase of the drying temperature.     

Wavelet packet correlation methods in biometrics

We introduce wavelet packet correlation filter classifiers. Correlation filters are traditionally designed in the image domain by minimization of some criterion function of the image training set. Instead, we perform classification in wavelet spaces that have training set representations that provide better solutions to the optimization problem in the filter design. We propose a pruning algorithm to find these wavelet spaces by using a correlation energy cost function, and we describe a match score fusion algorithm for applying the filters trained across the packet tree. The proposed classification algorithm is suitable for any object-recognition task. We present results by implementing a biometric recognition system that uses the NIST 24 fingerprint database, and show that applying correlation filters in the wavelet domain results in considerable improvement of the standard correlation filter algorithm.     

Dynamic adsorption of trinitrotoluene on granular activated carbon

The effects of trinitrotoluene (TNT) dynamic adsorption on granular activated carbon produced by 'Miloje Zakic', Serbia, are presented. The main task was to determine the conditions for TNT dynamic adsorption in order to remove the dissolved TNT from wastewater. The effects of temperature, concentration and flow rate in the chromatographic system were examined. Flow rates between 1 and 4 dm(3)/h were used. The heights of activated carbon in the columns were 70 and 135 mm while the diameter was 12 mm. The experiments were conducted at different temperatures (10-60 degrees C) and TNT influent concentrations ranging from 32.76 to 171 mg/dm(3) were used. The adsorption capacity of the activated carbon increased with increasing temperature, but it decreased with increasing input concentration and flow rate. The results obtained indicate that the influence of temperature is greater than was expected and the bed height and the amount of GAC used could be significantly lowered by increasing the temperature. The possibility of desorbing TNT from saturated activated carbon was also investigated. The amount of TNT adsorbed per mass unit of adsorbent was calculated using a model that optimally agreed with the experimental data.