Holographic analysis of thin films

Technique for monitoring deposition of films on surfaces, in place on a real-time basis, reads both the thickness and the uniformity of the deposited film. Holograms are produced from both reflected and transmitted light on one plate

Hybrid holographic system using reflected and transmitted object beams simultaneously Patent

Hybrid holographic system using reference, transmitted, and reflected beams simultaneousl

Hybrid holographic system

Improved holographic system has high degree of resolution and capability of providing a hologram of a moving object without requiring that the system have a high mechanical stability

Brief Studies

The Lutheran Church as Evaluated by a Searcher An Outsider Comes in and Looks Bac

Above-ground biomass and productivity in a rain forest of eastern South America

Abstract: The dynamics of tropical forest woody plants was studied at the Nouragues Field Station, central French Guiana. Stem density, basal area, above-ground biomass and above-ground net primary productivity, including the contribution of litterfall, were estimated from two large permanent census plots of 12 and 10 ha, established on contrasting soil types, and censused twice, first in 1992¿1994, then again in 2000¿2002. Mean stem density was 512 stems ha¿1 and basal area, 30m2 ha¿1. Stem mortality rate ranged between 1.51% and 2.06% y¿1. In both plots, stem density decreased over the study period. Using a correlation between wood density and wood hardness directly measured by a Pilodyn wood tester,we found that the mean wood densitywas 0.63 g cm¿3, 12% smaller than the mean of wood density estimated from the literature values for the species occurring in our plot. Above-ground biomass ranged from 356 to 398Mgha¿1 (oven-dry mass), and it increased over the census period. Leaf biomass was 6.47Mg ha¿1. Our total estimate of aboveground net primary productivity was 8.81 MgC ha¿1 y¿1 (in carbon units), not accounting for loss to herbivory, branchfalls, or biogenic volatile organic compounds, whichmay altogether account for an additional 1MgC ha¿1 y¿1. Coarse wood productivity (stem growth plus recruitment) contributed to 4.16 MgC ha¿1 y¿1. Litterfall contributed to 4.65MgC ha¿1 y¿1 with 3.16 MgC ha¿1 y¿1 due to leaves, 1.10 MgC ha¿1 y¿1 to twigs, and 0.39MgC ha¿1 y¿1 to fruits and flowers. The increase in above-ground biomass for both trees and lianas is consistentwith the hypothesis of a shift in the functioning of Amazonian rain forests driven by environmental changes, although alternative hypotheses such as a recovery from past disturbances cannot be ruled out at our site, as suggested by the observed decrease in stem density. Key Words: above-ground biomass, carbon, French Guiana, net primary productivity, tropical fores

Normal frames and the validity of the equivalence principle. I. Cases in a neighborhood and at a point

A treatment in a neighborhood and at a point of the equivalence principle on the basis of derivations of the tensor algebra over a manifold is given. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the existence of local bases, called normal frames, in which the components of derivations vanish in a neighborhood or at a point. These frames (bases), if any, are explicitly described and the problem of their holonomicity is considered. In particular, the obtained results concern symmetric as well as nonsymmetric linear connections.Comment: LaTeX2e, 9 pages, to be published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Genera

Including historical data in the analysis of clinical trials

Data of previous trials with a similar setting are often available in the analysis of clinical trials. Several Bayesian methods have been proposed for including historical data as prior information in the analysis of the current trial, such as the (modified) power prior, the (robust) meta-analytic-predictive prior, the commensurate prior and methods proposed by Pocock and Murray et al. We compared these methods and illustrated their use in a practical setting, including an assessment of the comparability of the current and the historical data. The motivating data set consists of randomised controlled trials for acute myeloid leukaemia. A simulation study was used to compare the methods in terms of bias, precision, power and type I error rate. Methods that estimate parameters for the between-trial heterogeneity generally offer the best trade-off of power, precision and type I error, with the meta-analytic-predictive prior being the most promising method. The results show that it can be feasible to include historical data in the analysis of clinical trials, if an appropriate method is used to estimate the heterogeneity between trials, and the historical data satisfy criteria for comparability

A new bond fluctuation method for a polymer undergoing gel electrophoresis

We present a new computational methodology for the investigation of gel electrophoresis of polyelectrolytes. We have developed the method initially to incorporate sliding motion of tight parts of a polymer pulled by an electric field into the bond fluctuation method (BFM). Such motion due to tensile force over distances much larger than the persistent length is realized by non-local movement of a slack monomer at an either end of the tight part. The latter movement is introduced stochastically. This new BFM overcomes the well-known difficulty in the conventional BFM that polymers are trapped by gel fibers in relatively large fields. At the same time it also reproduces properly equilibrium properties of a polymer in a vanishing filed limit. The new BFM thus turns out an efficient computational method to study gel electrophoresis in a wide range of the electric field strength.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure