Interactions of molecules in the vicinity of gold nanoparticles

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can locally increase the temperature of their surrounding medium and provide regions of high field enhancement near their surface. The origin of these two effects lies in the confined oscillations of conduction band electrons called plasmons, which are excited by the resonant electromagnetic field. In this thesis heating and field enhancing properties of AuNPs are used to manipulate the interaction of molecules attached to them. Two intermolecular processes are studied: formation of DNA double strand and energy transfer between fluorescent molecules. Formation of DNA double strands near AuNPs is studied on the single-particle level. To this end, two single AuNPs with complementary DNA strands on their surface are brought into close proximity by optical trapping. The formation of DNA double strands leading to binding between two single nanoparticles is detected systematically by the change of the optical properties of AuNPs due to plasmonic coupling at small distances. Moreover, the increase of the trapping laser power slows down the specific binding by more than an order of magnitude. The observed result is explained by a semi-quantitative model where the temperature increase of the surrounding medium due to plasmonic heating is compared to the temperature required to dissociate DNA double helices. Plasmonic heating brings the system closer to the melting temperature and the formation of double strand is suppressed. Further, Foerster resonant energy transfer (FRET) between two fluorescent species attached to AuNPs is investigated. FRET is a non-radiative energy transfer leading to the decrease of fluorescence of the donor molecule and increase of fluorescence of the acceptor molecule. By measuring the fluorescence lifetime of donor and acceptor molecules near AuNPs and in free FRET pairs we quantify the influence of AuNPs on FRET. FRET efficiencies near AuNPs stay nearly as high as in the case of free FRET pairs and FRET rates in the presence of AuNPs are increased. The simulations of FRET enhancement between AuNPs suggest the presence of several regions of field enhancement and of field suppression. To fully use the potential of AuNP dimers for FRET enhancement a precise placement of molecules is required

Does health Matter for Inequality in Transition Countries: The Case of Ukraine

Significant deterioration in health and income inequality in Ukraine as well as in other CIS countries during the early transition motivated us to investigate the relationship between the two categories. Based on both macro- and micro-data analysis we focused on how different aspects of health affect income inequality in Ukraine. Significant impact of health has been proven on both micro- and macro levels. According to macrolevel results, a 1% increase in life expectancy leads to a 2,1% decrease in income inequality as measured by index Gini. Micro-level research also evidenced significance of different health aspects for income inequality.Income inequality, health, Ukraine, Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey

Micro-level analysis of causality from health to individual incomes in Ukraine

Проведено аналіз впливу здоров'я і різних його складових на доходи населення України і здійснено емпіричний аналіз на мікрорівні. Для проведення дослідження використовувалась база даних "Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey". Доведено значний вплив фактору здоров'я на доходи населення в Україні.We investigated the effect of health and aspects of health on income and implemented empirical analysis on micro-level. Ukrainian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey individual-level database is used for microlevel analysis of causality from differentials in health to differentials in monthly income. Signifi cant impact of health to income in Ukraine has been proven

Quotations from Ecclesiastes in Church Slavonic texts

The article deals with the quotations from Ecclesiastes in early translated texts and in original Old Rus’ literature. Quotations found in medieval Slavonic texts, both translated and original, appear to be independent of the translation of continuous Ecclesiastes known from manuscripts of around the 15th century; they do not give positive support for the existence of a complete translation before the 15th century. However, the quotations prove that parts of Ecclesiastes were known in some form of exegetical compilations

Interactions of molecules in the vicinity of gold nanoparticles

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) can locally increase the temperature of their surrounding medium and provide regions of high field enhancement near their surface. The origin of these two effects lies in the confined oscillations of conduction band electrons called plasmons, which are excited by the resonant electromagnetic field. In this thesis heating and field enhancing properties of AuNPs are used to manipulate the interaction of molecules attached to them. Two intermolecular processes are studied: formation of DNA double strand and energy transfer between fluorescent molecules. Formation of DNA double strands near AuNPs is studied on the single-particle level. To this end, two single AuNPs with complementary DNA strands on their surface are brought into close proximity by optical trapping. The formation of DNA double strands leading to binding between two single nanoparticles is detected systematically by the change of the optical properties of AuNPs due to plasmonic coupling at small distances. Moreover, the increase of the trapping laser power slows down the specific binding by more than an order of magnitude. The observed result is explained by a semi-quantitative model where the temperature increase of the surrounding medium due to plasmonic heating is compared to the temperature required to dissociate DNA double helices. Plasmonic heating brings the system closer to the melting temperature and the formation of double strand is suppressed. Further, Foerster resonant energy transfer (FRET) between two fluorescent species attached to AuNPs is investigated. FRET is a non-radiative energy transfer leading to the decrease of fluorescence of the donor molecule and increase of fluorescence of the acceptor molecule. By measuring the fluorescence lifetime of donor and acceptor molecules near AuNPs and in free FRET pairs we quantify the influence of AuNPs on FRET. FRET efficiencies near AuNPs stay nearly as high as in the case of free FRET pairs and FRET rates in the presence of AuNPs are increased. The simulations of FRET enhancement between AuNPs suggest the presence of several regions of field enhancement and of field suppression. To fully use the potential of AuNP dimers for FRET enhancement a precise placement of molecules is required

Selection of Elements at the Dissolution of Heat Resistant Nickel Alloys in Mineral Acid Solutions

Thermodynamic modeling of the interaction of a heat-resistant nickel alloy containing refractory rare metals with hydrochloric, sulfuric and nitric acids with a temperature change in the range of 20-100 ∘ C and a concentration of 50 to 150 g / dm3 at a pressure of 1 atm was carried out. The thermodynamic assessment data were confirmed in experiments on the anodic dissolution of the alloy in sulfate solutions. According to the results of x-ray phase analysis of the sludge, it was revealed that tungsten in the form of a solid solution in nickel passes to this product. Also, tantalum and niobium pass into the slurry in the form of oxides. Mostly, Re, Co, Cr passed into the electrolyte solution. The results of the study can serve as a scientific basis for the development of promising technologies for processing metal waste from heat-resistant alloys. Keywords: thermodynamic modeling, heat resistant nickel alloy, rare elements, mineral acids, dissolutio

INFLUENCE OF GROUP V METALS ON PHASE FORMATION AND INTERFACIAL PROPERTIES OF TITANIUM-ALUMINUM ALLOYS

A theoretical and experimental study of the regularities of phase formation in the Ti-Al – Nb(Ta, V) alloy obtained by the joint aluminothermal reduction of metals from oxides is car-ried out. The physicochemical properties of the alloys were studied

INTERFACIAL INTERACTION IN Ti -Al -(Nb, Ta, V) SYSTEM

Physical and chemical properties of Ti-Al - (Nb, Ta, V) alloys obtained by joint aluminothermal reduction of metals from oxides are studied. The influence of melting point and concentration of Nb, Ta, V on density and surface tension of alloys was studied

The textual history of Ecclesiastes in Church Slavonic

So far only a limited number of biblical books in Church Slavonic has been studied and edited, and the book of Ecclesiastes does not feature among these. Ecclesiastes is not a mainstream book such as the Gospels and the Psalter but rather a peripheral biblical text never used in Eastern Orthodox liturgical services. Its late date and small number of witnesses, which also reflect its marginal status, are additional reasons why this particular book has not attracted much scholarly attention in the past. This thesis is intended to contribute to studies in the history of the Church Slavonic Bible by editing the unpublished text of Ecclesiastes including its catenary versions and discussing its textual tradition. Ecclesiastes surfaces as a complete text relatively late: the earliest extant Cyrillic manuscripts are from the 15th century. Such a late date may be an indication that there was no pressing need for translating the non-liturgical book of Ecclesiastes. Two Church Slavonic translations of Ecclesiastes are extant: one, attested in Cyrillic manuscripts, survives in three distinct types: a continuous version of the text (32 manuscripts of the 15th-17th centuries), a fragmentary commentated version (1 manuscript of the 16th century), a fragmentary commentated insertion (8 manuscripts of the 15th-16th centuries). The other translation is a Croatian Church Slavonic version in Glagolitic breviaries (17 manuscripts of the 13th-16th centuries). The structure of the thesis is determined by the nature of the subject, which deals with textual criticism. The chapters are organised into a series of sections which all have headings. This somewhat 'atomistic' approach is necessitated by the fact that we are faced with fragmentary and incomplete evidence of manuscript sources, and therefore only detailed examination and comparison of various manuscripts and versions of the text will enable us to solve, at least in part, the textual history of the book in question. The limitations of the present study are the scarcity of manuscripts and the lateness of the tradition. These, however, are familiar 'obstacles' recognised by Slavists working on similar subjects. The thesis consists of an introduction, which presents a brief historical outline of the Church Slavonic biblical translations, 4 chapters, conclusion, bibliography and 2 appendices: the first of these contains a variorum edition of the continuous text of Ecclesiastes; the second, the parallel texts from continuous, commentated and interpolated versions. Chapter 1 gives a list of all the extant manuscripts of Ecclesiastes with short descriptions including dating (on palaeographical grounds), and investigates the textual relationships between various groups of manuscripts using the classical method of textual criticism and stemmatics. This leads on to a discussion of the type of edition to be used. At the end of the chapter a stemma codicum is constructed. Analysis of the language is carried out in an attempt to date the translation on linguistic grounds. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the Greek and Slavonic catena and explores some of the key issues arising out of the existence of several versions and early fragments of Ecclesiastes. It deals with problems concerning the date and place of the translation of Ecclesiastes. Detailed analysis sheds some light on the textual peculiarities of the three versions: commentated, interpolated and continuous. The complex interrelationship between these three versions is investigated further and a comparison with the earlier extant fragments of the catena is also carried out. Chapter 3 deals with the quotations from Ecclesiastes in early translated texts and in original Old Russian literature. Quotations found in medieval Slavonic texts, both translated and original, appear to be independent of the translation of continuous Ecclesiastes known from manuscripts of around the 15th century. However, the quotations prove that parts of Ecclesiastes were known in some form of exegetical compilations. Chapter 4 investigates the translation of Ecclesiastes in the Croatian Church Slavonic breviary tradition. It examines claims made by scholars in the past and present with regards to its authorship and to the language of the source from which this text was translated. The conclusion is drawn that the text was translated purely from Latin. This conclusion is based on a number of findings: errors of translation, divergences in wording and grammatical forms between the Croat Glagolitic and Cyrillic Church Slavonic texts, and certain syntactical constructions such as periphrastic expressions for the future, which point unambiguously to a Latin original. In addition the date of the translation is placed roughly between the 12th and the 13th centuries. The conclusions summarize the findings of the study: textual analysis of the continuous text of Ecclesiastes indicates that all the extant Cyrillic manuscripts come from a single translation; this translation was made at some time between the 10th century and the beginning of the 15th century. Commmentated and interpolated versions should be treated as redactions deriving from a fuller catena. This fuller catena may have given rise to the continuous text through the removal of the commentary. Alternatively, the orginal plain text may have been added to the newly translated commentary to produce a commentated version. Bearing in mind that it is hard to decide conclusively between these possibilities, the difficulties of reconstructing archetypes of the plain text and the commentary are shown. The investigation of the text in the Croatian tradition demonstrates that the translation in the breviaries was made from Latin, and thereby eliminates the hypothesis that Methodius was the translator of this version. GB is chosen as a base text for the edition in Appendix 1. The main reason for doing so is pragmatic, for it offers as complete a text as is available to us. Besides, the availability of information on the cultural and historical circumstances surrounding the production of GB, in addition to its importance for the history of the East Slavonic biblical tradition makes it more worthwhile. By publishing the text from manuscript Sinodal'nyj 915 (GB) with a critical apparatus, supplying variants from other manuscripts, the editorial 'control' which the compilers of GB exercised while working with the text translated from Greek is illustrated. They appear to have compared their exemplar with another Slavonic witness to fill a lacuna in the middle of the text, and they shortened the interpolation by removing the commentary. It seems that they deliberately left the biblical verses in the interpolation intact. The textual evidence does not support the supposition that the compilers of GB collated their text of Ecclesiastes with any Greek or Latin sources. The choice of GB for the edition constitutes a significant step towards wider research into and eventual publication of the Gennadian Bible, which has received little attention hitherto, despite its significance as the first complete Church Slavonic Bible. In appendix 2 three versions of Ecclesiastes are presented in a tabular form: the continuous version is taken from the manuscript Sinodal'nyj 915 (GB), the commentated version from the manuscript Undol'skij 13, and the interpolated version from the manuscript Pogodinskij 1 with variant readings from the manuscripts of group 1. In the thesis several new findings are presented. These are: the absence of any link between the versions of Ecclesiastes in the Cyrillic and in the Glagolitic manuscripts, and the implausibility of a Methodian origin for the Croatian Church Slavonic text. Our review of evidence from quotations from Ecclesiastes in other sources shows that they do not give positive support for the existence of a complete translation before the 15th century. The edition locates the GB version textologically and shows that it is a conflation of two branches of the tradition. This study of Ecclesiastes shows that certain views of the history of the text are untenable, fills a lacuna in the investigation of the Church Slavonic biblical translations, and will contribute to the eventual production of a complete critical edition of the text.</p