Measurement to radius of Newton’s ring fringes using polar coordinate transform

Background: Newton’s ring method is often used to measure many physical parameters. And some measured physical quantity can be extracted by calculating the radius parameter of circular fringes from Newton's ring configuration. Methods: The paper presents a new measuring method for radius of circular fringes, which includes three main steps, i.e., determination of center coordinates of circular fringes, polar coordinates transformation of circular fringes, and gray projection of the transformed result which along the horizontal direction. Then the radius values of each order ring are calculated. Results: The simulated results indicate that the measuring accuracy of the radius under the effect of random noise can keep the degree of less than 0.5 pixels. Conclusions: The proposed method can obtain the radius data of each order closed circular fringes. Also, it has several other advantages, including ability of good anti-noise, sub-pixel accuracy and high reliability, and easy to in-situ use

Separation and Recycling of Concentrated Heavy Metal Wastewater by Tube Membrane Distillation Integrated with Crystallization

Tube membrane distillation (MD) integrated with a crystallization method is used in this study for the concurrent productions of pure water and salt crystals from concentrated single and mixed system solutions. The effects of concentrated Zn 2+ and Ni 2+ on performance in terms of membrane flux, permeate conductivity, crystal recovery rates, and crystal grades are investigated. Preferred crystallization and co-crystallization determinations were performed for mixed solutions. The results revealed that membrane fluxes remained at 2.61 kg·m −2 ·h −1 and showed a sharp decline until the saturation increased to 1.38. Water yield conductivity was below 10 μs·cm −1. High concentrated zinc and nickel did not have a particular effect on the rejection of the membrane process. For the mixed solutions, membrane flux showed a sharp decrease due to the high saturation, while the conductivity of permeate remained below 10 μs·cm −1 during the whole process. Co-crystallization has been proven to be a better method due to the existence of the SO 2− common-ion effect. Membrane fouling studies have suggested that the membrane has excellent resistance to fouling from highly concentrated solutions. The MD integrated with crystallization proves to be a promising technology for treating highly concentrated heavy metal solutions

Output entanglement and squeezing of two-mode fields generated by a single atom

A single four-level atom interacting with two-mode cavities is investigated. Under large detuning condition, we obtain the effective Hamiltonian which is unitary squeezing operator of two-mode fields. Employing the input-output theory, we find that the entanglement and squeezing of the output fields can be achieved. By analyzing the squeezing spectrum, we show that asymmetric detuning and asymmetric atomic initial state split the squeezing spectrum from one valley into two minimum values, and appropriate leakage of the cavity is needed for obtaining output entangled fields

Responsiveness of voltage-gated calcium channels in SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells on quasi-three-dimensional micropatterns formed with poly (l-lactic acid)

Introduction: In this study, quasi-three-dimensional (3D) microwell patterns were fabricated with poly (l-lactic acid) for the development of cell-based assays, targeting voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). Methods and materials: SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells were interfaced with the microwell patterns and found to grow as two dimensional (2D), 3D, and near two dimensional (N2D), categorized on the basis of the cells’ location in the pattern. The capability of the microwell patterns to support 3D cell growth was evaluated in terms of the percentage of the cells in each growth category. Cell spreading was analyzed in terms of projection areas under light microscopy. SH-SY5Y cells’ VGCC responsiveness was evaluated with confocal microscopy and a calcium fluorescent indicator, Calcium GreenTM-1. The expression of L-type calcium channels was evaluated using immunofluorescence staining with DM-BODIPY. Results: It was found that cells within the microwells, either N2D or 3D, showed more rounded shapes and less projection areas than 2D cells on flat poly (l-lactic acid) substrates. Also, cells in microwells showed a significantly lower VGCC responsiveness than cells on flat substrates, in terms of both response magnitudes and percentages of responsive cells, upon depolarization with 50 mM K+. This lower VGCC responsiveness could not be explained by the difference in L-type calcium channel expression. For the two patterns addressed in this study, N2D cells consistently exhibited an intermediate value of either projection areas or VGCC responsiveness between those for 2D and 3D cells, suggesting a correlative relation between cell morphology and VGCC responsiveness. Conclusion: These results suggest that the pattern structure and therefore the cell growth characteristics were critical factors in determining cell VGCC responsiveness and thus provide an approach for engineering cell functionality in cell-based assay systems and tissue engineering scaffolds

Effect of Neoadjuvant Chemoradiotherapy with Capecitabine versus Fluorouracil for Locally Advanced Rectal Cancer: A Meta-Analysis

A meta-analysis was carried out to compare the efficacy and safety of capecitabine plus radiation with 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) plus radiotherapy (RT) as neoadjuvant treatment in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). We searched the Cochrane database, Ovid, Medline, Embase, ISI databases, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database between January 1998 and October 2014. Trials of capecitabine compared with 5-FU plus RT as neoadjuvant treatment for LARC were considered for inclusion. RevMan software was used to analyze these data. Nine trials were included in this meta-analysis, which covered a total of 3141 patients. The meta-analysis showed that capecitabine group had statistically significant better pCR rates (OR, 1.34; 95% CI, 1.10–1.64; P=0.003), T downstaging rates (OR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.22–2.06; P=0.0007), N downstaging rates (OR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.34–3.16; P=0.001), less distant metastasis (OR, 0.63; 95% CI, 0.44–0.88; P=0.007), and lowered leucocytes (OR, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.11–0.54; P=0.0005), but with higher incidence of hand-foot syndrome (HFS) (OR, 4.43; 95% CI, 1.59–12.33; P=0.004). Capecitabine was more efficient than 5-FU in terms of tumor response in neoadjuvant treatment for patients with LARC and favourably low toxicity with the exception of HFS

ScQ cloud quantum computation for generating Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states of up to 10 qubits

We introduce an online for public quantum computation platform, named as ScQ, based on a 1D array of 10-qubit superconducting processor. Single qubit rotation gates can be performed on each qubit. Controlled-NOT (CNOT) gates between nearest-neighbor sites on the 1D array of 10 qubits are available. We show online preparation and verification of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states of up to 10 qubits by this platform, for all possible blocks of qubits in the chain. Both graphic interface and the quantum assembly language methods are presented to achieve the above tasks, which rely on a parameter scanning feature implemented on ScQ. Performance of this quantum computation platform, such as fidelities of the logic gates and details of the superconducting device, are presented