Mesomorphic Properties of an Homologous Series of Thioalkyl-Terminated Azomesogens

A new homologous series (ten compounds) of 2-hydroxy azo compounds SRn (where n:1–10) were synthesized. Their structures were elucidated using spectroscopic techniques such as IR (Infrared), 1H-NMR as well as elemental analysis. Mesomorphic properties and phase transitions were studied using polarized hot stage optical microscopy and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and are discussed as a function of the number of carbon atoms in the thioalkyl chain. It has been found that all compounds in the series are pure nematogens

Near-UV to near-IR disk-averaged Earth's reflectance spectra

We report 320 to 1020nm disk-averaged Earth reflectance spectra obtained from Moon's Earthshine observations with the EMMI spectrograph on the NTT at ESO La Silla (Chile). The spectral signatures of Earth atmosphere and ground vegetation are observed. A vegetation red-edge of up to 9% is observed on Europe and Africa and ~2% upon Pacific Ocean. The spectra also show that Earth is a blue planet when Rayleigh scattering dominates, or totally white when the cloud cover is large.Comment: Proceeding of an oral prensentation at the UAI No200 Colloquiu

Pengaruh Kegiatan Geothermal Terhadap Keanekaragaman Ikan Di Aliran Sungai Cikaro, Kabupaten Bandung

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui jenis dan keanekaragaaman ikan di Sungai Cikaro Kabupaten Bandung, serta pengaruh Eksplorasi Panas Bumi (Geothermal) terhadap keanekaragaman ikan di hulu Sungai Cikaro Kabupaten Bandung yang dilakukan dari bulan April sampai dengan Juni 2015. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode survey dengan 4 stasiun, dan dilaksanakan pada bulan April sampai Juni 2015. Jenis ikan yang teridentifikasi selama penelitian adalah Puntius binotatus (14,8%), Hampala macrolepidota (1,5%), Osteochilus vittatus(0,5%), Rasbora aprotaenia(3,9%), Gambusia affinis (9,9%), Anabas testudineus (8,4%), Mystus nemurus (35%), Channa striata (3%), Oreochromis niloticus(7,4%), Trichogaster trichopterus (11,8%), Pterygoplichthys pardalis (1,5%) dan Monopterus albus (2,5%). Indeks Keanekaragaman Ikan yang didapati pada stasiun 1 1,08. Stasiun 2 adalah 0. Stasiun 3 adalah 1,79. Stasiun 4 adalah1,47. Indeks Keseragaman Ikan di stasiun 1 adalah 1,08. Stasiun 2 adalah 0. stasiun 3 adalah 0,86. Dan stasiun 4 adalah 0,71. Pengaruh limbah geothermal tidak berpengaruh terhadap stasiun 3 dan 4 karena nilai kualitas perairan tidak berbeda dengan stasiun 1 yang tidak terkena terpengaruh oleh limbah kegiatan eksplorasi geothermal

Effect of ketoprofen on immune cells in mice

Purpose: To study the immunosuppressant and immunopotentiating effects of ketoprofen on antibody producing cells.Methods: Mice were given ketoprofen at doses of 1 mg/kg/day and 5 mg/kg/day for seven days. Similarly polyinosinic–polycytidylic acid (Poly IC) and phosphate buffer saline (PBS) were used as positive and negative control, respectively, for seven days. After seven days, the mice were sacrificed and their spleens removed. Simultaneously, blood was withdrawn from the hearts of the mice and serum was separated from the blood. The spleen cells were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) while the serum was investigated by enzyme-linked immunosorbant (ELISA) to evaluate the effects of ketoprofen on the ability of individual cell to produce antibodies and antibody- mediated immune responses.Results: Ketoprofen significantly (p < 0.001) reduced the ability of individual cells to produce antibodies. There was a significant difference (p < 0.001) in % of spot forming cells of PBS treated negative control group (0.045 %) as against positive control (0.058 %), 1 mg ketoprofen /kg/day (0.037 %) and 5 mg ketoprofen/kg/day (0.032 %) treated groups. The results of ELISA showed a significant (p < 0.005) difference in the absorbance values between negative control, positive control, ELISA control and ketoprofen treated groups. Absorbance was significantly (p < 0.005) reduced in ketoprofen-treated groups.Conclusion: The ability of an individual cell to produce antibodies and antibody-mediated immune responses is suppressed by ketoprofen, suggesting that it is immunosuppressive, and thus indicating its potential application in patients with auto-immune disorders.Keywords: Ketoprofen, Immunomodulatory, Immunosupressive, Antibody, Spot-forming cells, Polyinosinic–polycytidylic aci

Properties of the water to boron nitride interaction: from zero to two dimensions with benchmark accuracy

Molecular adsorption on surfaces plays an important part in catalysis, corrosion, desalination, and various other processes that are relevant to industry and in nature. As a complement to experiments, accurate adsorption energies can be obtained using various sophisticated electronic structure methods that can now be applied to periodic systems. The adsorption energy of water on boron nitride substrates, going from zero to 2-dimensional periodicity, is particularly interesting as it calls for an accurate treatment of polarizable electrostatics and dispersion interactions, as well as posing a practical challenge to experiments and electronic structure methods. Here, we present reference adsorption energies, static polarizabilities, and dynamic polarizabilities, for water on BN substrates of varying size and dimension. Adsorption energies are computed with coupled cluster theory, fixed-node quantum Monte Carlo (FNQMC), the random phase approximation (RPA), and second order M{\o}ller-Plesset (MP2) theory. These explicitly correlated methods are found to agree in molecular as well as periodic systems. The best estimate of the water/h-BN adsorption energy is $-107\pm7$ meV from FNQMC. In addition, the water adsorption energy on the BN substrates could be expected to grow monotonically with the size of the substrate due to increased dispersion interactions but interestingly, this is not the case here. This peculiar finding is explained using the static polarizabilities and molecular dispersion coefficients of the systems, as computed from time-dependent density functional theory (DFT). Dynamic as well as static polarizabilities are found to be highly anisotropic in these systems. In addition, the many-body dispersion method in DFT emerges as a particularly useful estimation of finite size effects for other expensive, many-body wavefunction based methods

Chemical abundances in seven red giants of NGC 2360 and NGC 2447

Chemical abundances of about fifteen elements from oxygen to europium are measured in seven red giants of the two open clusters NGC 2360 and NGC 2447. The effective temperatures of the giants are determined spectroscopically by taking advantage of their known masses (~2 Mo in NGC 2360 and ~3 Mo in NGC 2447) and bolometric magnitudes. The average iron abundances we obtain for the two clusters are [Fe/H]=0.07 for NGC 2360 and [Fe/H]=0.03 for NGC 2447. Evolutionary stellar model calculations are performed in the mass range 1-4 Mo in order to analyze the surface Na and O abundances predicted after the first dredge-up. The sodium abundance shows a well defined correlation with stellar mass in the 2-3 Mo range. The agreement between our Na abundance determinations in NGC 2360 and our model predictions at 2 Mo is very good. In contrast, the overabundance in one of the three stars in NGC 2447 exceeds that predicted at 3 Mo by ~0.08 dex, which is significant compared to the observational error bars. The effects of core overshooting, convection prescription, metallicity and nuclear reaction rates on the Na surface predictions of our models are investigated. An oxygen deficiency relative to iron by 0.2 dex is measured in our stars, in disagreement with our model predictions. Assuming that the Sun is 0.1-0.3 dex enriched in oxygen relative to neighbor stars could explain the discrepancy.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Multiplicity of solutions for a class of fractional p(x,⋅)p(x,\cdot)-Kirchhoff type problems without the Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz condition

We are interested in the existence of solutions for the following fractional $p(x,\cdot)$-Kirchhoff type problem $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll} M \, \left(\displaystyle\int_{\Omega\times \Omega} \ \displaystyle{\frac{|u(x)-u(y)|^{p(x,y)}}{p(x,y) \ |x-y|^{N+p(x,y)s}}} \ dx \, dy\right)(-\Delta)^{s}_{p(x,\cdot)}u = f(x,u), \quad x\in \Omega, \\ \\ u= 0, \quad x\in \partial\Omega, \end{array}\right.$$ where $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{N}$, $N\geq 2$ is a bounded smooth domain, $s\in(0,1),$ $p: \overline{\Omega}\times \overline{\Omega} \rightarrow (1, \infty)$, $(-\Delta)^{s}_{p(x,\cdot)}$ denotes the $p(x,\cdot)$-fractional Laplace operator, $M: [0,\infty) \to [0, \infty),$ and $f: \Omega \times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ are continuous functions. Using variational methods, especially the symmetric mountain pass theorem due to Bartolo-Benci-Fortunato (Nonlinear Anal. 7:9 (1983), 981-1012), we establish the existence of infinitely many solutions for this problem without assuming the Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz condition. Our main result in several directions extends previous ones which have recently appeared in the literature

Blur2sharp: A gan-based model for document image deblurring

The advances in mobile technology and portable cameras have facilitated enormously the acquisition of text images. However, the blur caused by camera shake or out-of-focus problems may affect the quality of acquired images and their use as input for optical character recognition (OCR) or other types of document processing. This work proposes an end-to-end model for document deblurring using cycle-consistent adversarial networks. The main novelty of this work is to achieve blind document deblurring, i.e., deblurring without knowledge of the blur kernel. Our method, named “Blur2Sharp CycleGAN, ” generates a sharp image from a blurry one and shows how cycle-consistent generative adversarial networks (CycleGAN) can be used in document deblurring. Using only a blurred image as input, we try to generate the sharp image. Thus, no information about the blur kernel is required. In the evaluation part, we use peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) to compare the deblurring images. The experiments demonstrate a clear improvement in visual quality with respect to the state-of-the-art using a dataset of text images