Infra-Red Surface-Plasmon-Resonance technique for biological studies

We report on a Surface-Plasmon-Resonance (SPR) technique based on Fourier -Transform - Infra - Red (FTIR) spectrometer. In contrast to the conventional surface plasmon technique, operating at a fixed wavelength and a variable angle of incidence, our setup allows the wavelength and the angle of incidence to be varied simultaneously. We explored the potential of the SPR technique in the infrared for biological studies involving aqueous solutions. Using computer simulations, we found the optimal combination of parameters (incident angle, wavelength) for performing this task. Our experiments with physiologically important glucose concentrations in water and in human plasma verified our computer simulations. Importantly, we demonstrated that the sensitivity of the SPR technique in the infrared range is not lower and in fact is even higher than that for visible light. We emphasize the advantages of infra red SPR for studying glucose and other biological molecules in living cells.Comment: 8 pages,8 figure

Multiple-Goal Heuristic Search

This paper presents a new framework for anytime heuristic search where the task is to achieve as many goals as possible within the allocated resources. We show the inadequacy of traditional distance-estimation heuristics for tasks of this type and present alternative heuristics that are more appropriate for multiple-goal search. In particular, we introduce the marginal-utility heuristic, which estimates the cost and the benefit of exploring a subtree below a search node. We developed two methods for online learning of the marginal-utility heuristic. One is based on local similarity of the partial marginal utility of sibling nodes, and the other generalizes marginal-utility over the state feature space. We apply our adaptive and non-adaptive multiple-goal search algorithms to several problems, including focused crawling, and show their superiority over existing methods

Tripartite Graph Clustering for Dynamic Sentiment Analysis on Social Media

The growing popularity of social media (e.g, Twitter) allows users to easily share information with each other and influence others by expressing their own sentiments on various subjects. In this work, we propose an unsupervised \emph{tri-clustering} framework, which analyzes both user-level and tweet-level sentiments through co-clustering of a tripartite graph. A compelling feature of the proposed framework is that the quality of sentiment clustering of tweets, users, and features can be mutually improved by joint clustering. We further investigate the evolution of user-level sentiments and latent feature vectors in an online framework and devise an efficient online algorithm to sequentially update the clustering of tweets, users and features with newly arrived data. The online framework not only provides better quality of both dynamic user-level and tweet-level sentiment analysis, but also improves the computational and storage efficiency. We verified the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches on the November 2012 California ballot Twitter data.Comment: A short version is in Proceeding of the 2014 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of dat

Comment On The Gd Crystalline Field And The Gd-pr Exchange In The Van Vleck Monopnictides

We report on the observation of resolved fine structure in the ESR of Gd in PrSb, TmSb, and PrBi single crystals. The fourth-order crystalline-field parameter b4 was found to increase with the lattice constant upon going from the antimonides to the bismuthides, consistent with the variation of b4 in the analogous nonmagnetic pnictides. A correlation between b4 and the Korringa rate in the analogous nonmagnetic compounds suggests that the variation of b4 is associated with conduction-electron effects. Also the variation of the Gd-Pr exchange parameter, JGd-Pr across the pnictides is attributed to variation of the conduction-electron d-d overlap. The data enable us to estimate the pressure derivative of b4 and JGd-Pr. © 1979 The American Physical Society.1942385238

Hormonal adaptations to different training intensities during the preparation of elite judokas for competition

Many efforts are made to quantify objectively the balance between training load and the athlete’s tolerance. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the balance between anabolic (i.e. testosterone and IGF-I) and catabolic (i.e. cortisol) hormones in elite judokas during their preparations (4 months) for the European championships. Five healthy elite Israeli judokas (four male, one female, age range 17–26 years) were tested at baseline, after two months of moderate training, after another one month of intense training, after one month of tapering down prior to the competition, and during the week after the championships. Hormonal level remained relatively unchanged during period of moderate training. Circulating levels of IGF-I and testosterone decreased and the cortisol/testosterone ratio increased during intense training. However, only the decrease in circulating IGF-I level reached statistical significance. Both levels of IGF-I and testosterone increased significantly, and the cortisol/testosterone ratio decreased significantly following tapering down, prior to the championships, compared to the levels during intense training. Changes in the balance of anabolic and catabolic hormones during the training season may help elite athletes and assist their coaches in their preparation for the competition

Esr Of Au: Yb Thin Films: Crystal-field Effects And The Kondo Dilemma

ESR experiments at liquid-helium temperatures on Au: Yb thin films evaporated on quartz and NaCl substrates are reported. The anisotropy on the.2294161416