Intrinsic Fluorescence-Based Optical Fiber Sensor for Cocaine Using a Molecularly Imprinted Polymer as the Recognition Element

A fiber-optic chemical sensor for the detection of cocaine has been developed, based on a molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) containing a fluorescein moiety as the signalling group. The fluorescent MIP was formed and covalently attached to the distal end of an optical fiber. The sensor exhibited an increase in fluorescence intensity in response to cocaine in the concentration range of 0 - 500 μM in aqueous acetonitrile mixtures with good reproducibility over one month. Selectivity for cocaine over others drugs has also been demonstrated

Applicability of offshore mooring and foundation technologies for marine renewable energy (MRE) device arrays

Published onlineThe marine renewable energy (MRE) sector is progressing from single device units to device arrays. Currently, the mooring/foundation technologies used in MRE are based on offshore oil/gas industry practices. For MRE arrays to reach commercialization, several issues need to be addressed including the hy-drodynamic array layout, electrical infrastructure, operations, maintenance, control, moorings, foundations, installation and logistics. The DTOcean (The Optimal Design Tools for Ocean Energy Arrays) project is aimed at accelerating the industrial development of ocean energy power generation knowledge, and providing design tools for deploying the first generation of wave and tidal energy converter arrays. In this paper, the ap-plicability of offshore mooring/foundation technologies for marine renewable energy (MRE) device arrays are assessed. The paper introduces the criteria which can be used to appraise technologies and approaches rele-vant to MRE devices. Existing mooring/foundation technologies used in the offshore industry are summarized with examples given of MRE device deployments. The guidance from certification agencies which is used for the design and analysis of mooring/foundation systems is summarized. If not addressed, the failure to opti-mize the design of ocean energy arrays and failure to properly understand economic, environmental, or relia-bility impacts of individual components could have significant consequences for the overall project and sec-tor. The function and type of mooring and/or foundation system are determined by a number of factors including the cost, site characteristics, expected environmental loading and environmental or legislative con-straints and these factors are discussed

Transmissive Labyrinthine Acoustic Metamaterial‐Based Holography for Extraordinary Energy Harvesting

Conventional energy sources are continuously depleting, and the world is actively seeking new green and efficient energy solutions. Enormous amounts of acoustic energy are dissipated daily, but the low intensity and limited efficiency of current harvesting techniques are preventing its adoption as a ubiquitous method of power generation. Herein, a strategic solution to increase acoustic energy harvesting efficiency using a specially designed metamaterial is implemented. A scalable transmissive labyrinthine acoustic metamaterial (LAM) is designed, developed, and employed to maximize ultrasound (40 kHz) capture over its large surface area (>27 k mm2), which is focused onto a piezoelectric film (78.6 mm2), thus magnifying incident sound pressure by 13.6 times. Three different piezoelectric films – two commercial and one lab-made nanocomposite film are tested with LAM in the acoustic energy harvesting system. An extraordinary voltage gain of 157–173% and a maximum power gain of 272% using the LAM compared to the case without the LAM are achieved. Multipoint focusing using holographic techniques, showcasing acoustic patterning to allow on-demand simultaneous harvesting in separate locations, is demonstrated. Our versatile approach for high-intensity acoustic energy harvesting opens future opportunities to exploit sound energy as a resource to contribute toward global sustainability

SED5 encodes a 39-kD integral membrane protein required for vesicular transport between the ER and the Golgi complex

HDEL (His-Asp-Glu-Leu) receptor, is essential fo

Web-based multimodal graphs for visually impaired people

This paper describes the development and evaluation of Web-based multimodal graphs designed for visually impaired and blind people. The information in the graphs is conveyed to visually impaired people through haptic and audio channels. The motivation of this work is to address problems faced by visually impaired people in accessing graphical information on the Internet, particularly the common types of graphs for data visualization. In our work, line graphs, bar charts and pie charts are accessible through a force feedback device, the Logitech WingMan Force Feedback Mouse. Pre-recorded sound files are used to represent graph contents to users. In order to test the usability of the developed Web graphs, an evaluation was conducted with bar charts as the experimental platform. The results showed that the participants could successfully use the haptic and audio features to extract information from the Web graphs

Promotion and tenure for community-engaged research: An examination of promotion and tenure support for community-engaged research at three universities collaborating through a Clinical and Translational Science Award

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Marrero DG, Hardwick EJ, Staten LK, Savaiano DA, Odell JD, Comer KF, Saha C. Promotion and Tenure for Community-Engaged Research: An Examination of Promotion and Tenure Support for Community-Engaged Research at Three Universities Collaborating through a Clinical and Translational Science Award. Clin Transl Sci. 2013 Jun;6(3):204-8, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cts.12061.Introduction. Community engaged health research, an approach to research which includes the participation of communities, promotes the translation of research to address and improve social determinants of health. As a way to encourage community engaged research, the National Institutes of Health required applicants to the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) to include a community engagement component. Although grant-funding may support an increase in community engaged research, faculty also respond to the rewards and demands of university promotion and tenure standards. This paper measures faculty perception of how three institutions funded by a CTSA support community engaged research in the promotion and tenure process. Methods: At three institutions funded by a CTSA, tenure track and non-tenure track faculty responded to a survey regarding perceptions of how promotion and tenure committees value community engaged research. Results: Faculty view support for community engaged research with some reserve. Only 36% agree that community engaged research is valued in the promotion and tenure process. Discussion: Encouraging community engaged scholarship requires changing the culture and values behind promotion and tenure decisions. Institutions will increase community engaged research and more faculty will adopt its principles, when it is rewarded by promotion and tenure committees

Bifurcations and chaos in semiconductor superlattices with a tilted magnetic field

We study the effects of dissipation on electron transport in a semiconductor superlattice with an applied bias voltage and a magnetic field that is tilted relative to the superlattice axis.In previous work, we showed that although the applied fields are stationary,they act like a THz plane wave, which strongly couples the Bloch and cyclotron motion of electrons within the lowest miniband. As a consequence,the electrons exhibit a unique type of Hamiltonian chaos, which creates an intricate mesh of conduction channels (a stochastic web) in phase space, leading to a large resonant increase in the current flow at critical values of the applied voltage. This phase-space patterning provides a sensitive mechanism for controlling electrical resistance. In this paper, we investigate the effects of dissipation on the electron dynamics by modifying the semiclassical equations of motion to include a linear damping term. We demonstrate that even in the presence of dissipation,deterministic chaos plays an important role in the electron transport process. We identify mechanisms for the onset of chaos and explore the associated sequence of bifurcations in the electron trajectories. When the Bloch and cyclotron frequencies are commensurate, complex multistability phenomena occur in the system. In particular, for fixed values of the control parameters several distinct stable regimes can coexist, each corresponding to different initial conditions. We show that this multistability has clear, experimentally-observable, signatures in the electron transport characteristics.Comment: 14 pages 11 figure

Implementing a Multi-Component School-based Obesity Prevention Intervention: A Qualitative Study

Objective: To explore barriers and facilitators to implementing and sustaining Healthy Choices, a three-year multi-component obesity prevention intervention implemented in middle schools in Massachusetts. Methods: Using purposive sampling, 56 in-depth interviews were conducted with middleschool employees representing different positions (administrators, teachers, food service personnel, and employees serving as intervention coordinators). Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Emergent themes were identified using thematic analyses. Results: State-mandated testing, budget limitations, and time constraints were viewed as implementation barriers while staff buy-in and technical assistance were seen as facilitating implementation. Respondents felt that intervention sustainability was dependent on external funding and expert assistance. Conclusions and Implications: Results confirm the importance of gaining faculty and staff support. Schools implementing large scale interventions should consider developing sustainable partnerships with organizations that can provide resources and ongoing training. Sustainability of complex interventions may depend on state-level strategies that provide resources for implementation and technical assistance

The stochastic spectator

We study the stochastic distribution of spectator fields predicted in different slow-roll inflation backgrounds. Spectator fields have a negligible energy density during inflation but may play an important dynamical role later, even giving rise to primordial density perturbations within our observational horizon today. During de-Sitter expansion there is an equilibrium solution for the spectator field which is often used to estimate the stochastic distribution during slow-roll inflation. However slow roll only requires that the Hubble rate varies slowly compared to the Hubble time, while the time taken for the stochastic distribution to evolve to the de-Sitter equilibrium solution can be much longer than a Hubble time. We study both chaotic (monomial) and plateau inflaton potentials, with quadratic, quartic and axionic spectator fields. We give an adiabaticity condition for the spectator field distribution to relax to the de-Sitter equilibrium, and find that the de-Sitter approximation is never a reliable estimate for the typical distribution at the end of inflation for a quadratic spectator during monomial inflation. The existence of an adiabatic regime at early times can erase the dependence on initial conditions of the final distribution of field values. In these cases, spectator fields acquire sub-Planckian expectation values. Otherwise spectator fields may acquire much larger field displacements than suggested by the de-Sitter equilibrium solution. We quantify the information about initial conditions that can be obtained from the final field distribution. Our results may have important consequences for the viability of spectator models for the origin of structure, such as the simplest curvaton models