Subradiant,Superradiant Plasmon Modes and Fano Resonance in a Multilayer Nanocylinder Array Standing on a Thin Metal Film

The optical properties of a novel nanostructure consisting of a hexagonal array of aligned vertically three-layered metal-dielectric-metal nanodisks on a silver film are theoretically studied through the finite-difference time-domain method. The novel nanostructure exhibits three obvious optical transmission bands due to the excitation of subradiant plasmon modes, superradiant plasmon modes, and Fano resonances. Surface plasmon polaritons of the underlying Ag film also play a significant role on these three optical transmission bands via coupling with localized surface plasmons of nanodisk pairs. Moreover, the nanostructure also exhibits a good tunability of optical response by modifying the sizes of cylinders, the thickness of underlying metal film, and the dielectric constant of middle layer. These results demonstrate the nanostructure with great advantages in optical sensors and filters.

     

DFT investigation on the decarboxylation mechanism of <Emphasis Type="Italic">ortho</Emphasis> hydroxy benzoic acids with acid catalysis

A density functional theory (DFT) study was performed to explore the mechanisms of the acid-catalyzed decarboxylation reaction of salicylic acids using the B3LYP method with 6-31++G(d,p) basis set in both gas phase and aqueous environment. The α-protonated cation of carboxylate acid was formed during the decarboxylation process in acidic conditions, and the presence of hydrogen ions promotes decarboxylation greatly by significantly decreasing the overall reaction energy barriers to 20.98 kcal mol^?1 in gas phase and 20.93 kcal mol^?1 in water, respectively. The hydrogen in the α-carbon came directly from the acid rather than from the carboxyl group in neutral state. Compared with the reaction in gas phase, water in aqueous state causes the reaction to occur more easily. Substituents of methyl group, chlorine and fluorine at the ortho-position to the carboxyl of salicylic acid could further lower the decarboxylation energy barriers and facilitate the reaction.     

A Two-Stage Adaptive Targeted Clinical Trial Design for Biomarker Performance-Based Sample Size Re-Estimation

Biomarker-directed targeted clinical trial is aimed at developing pharmaceutical agents for a targeted patient subpopulation sharing a specific disease etiology. Biomarker plays a key role in patient enrichment for targeted trials. Biomarker performance substantially impacts heterogeneity of a targeted study population and consequently trial efficiency, statistical power, information accumulation, and early stopping decision-making (Simon and Maitournam in Clinical Cancer Res 10:6759-6763, 2004; Maitournam and Simon in Stat Med 24:329-339, 2005; Gao et al. in Contemp Clin Trials 42:119-131, 2015). Hence, accurate assessment of biomarker performance is crucial to sample size calculation in planning of targeted trials. However, prior knowledge of biomarker performance is often limited at the planning stage due to inadequacy of biomarker validation, differences between study populations in demographic characteristics and trial settings, etc. Under this circumstance, adaptive design would be useful in updating biomarker performance and re-estimating sample sizes when a targeted trial is ongoing. In this paper, we propose a two-stage adaptive design that provides flexibility in biomarker performance-based sample size adaption for targeted trials. The design can facilitate a targeted trial to achieve planned statistical power by re-assessment of actual biomarker performance and subsequent sample size adaption while preserving desired type-1 error.     

Analysis of Road Network Pattern Considering Population Distribution and Central Business District

This paper proposes a road network growing model with the consideration of population distribution and central business district (CBD) attraction. In the model, the relative neighborhood graph (RNG) is introduced as the connection mechanism to capture the characteristics of road network topology. The simulation experiment is set up to illustrate the effects of population distribution and CBD attraction on the characteristics of road network. Moreover, several topological attributes of road network is evaluated by using coverage, circuitness, treeness and total length in the experiment. Finally, the suggested model is verified in the simulation of China and Beijing Highway networks.     

Profile and Determinants of Retinal Optical Intensity in Normal Eyes with Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography

Purpose

To investigate the profile and determinants of retinal optical intensity in normal subjects using 3D spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD OCT).

Methods

A total of 231 eyes from 231 healthy subjects ranging in age from 18 to 80 years were included and underwent a 3D OCT scan. Forty-four eyes were randomly chosen to be scanned by two operators for reproducibility analysis. Distribution of optical intensity of each layer and regions specified by the Early Treatment of Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) were investigated by analyzing the OCT raw data with our automatic graph-based algorithm. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed between retinal optical intensity and sex, age, height, weight, spherical equivalent (SE), axial length, image quality, disc area and rim/disc area ratio (R/D area ratio).

Results

For optical intensity measurements, the intraclass correlation coefficient of each layer ranged from 0.815 to 0.941, indicating good reproducibility. Optical intensity was lowest in the central area of retinal nerve fiber layer, ganglion cell layer, inner plexiform layer, inner nuclear layer, outer plexiform layer and photoreceptor layer, except for the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). Optical intensity was positively correlated with image quality in all retinal layers (0.553<β<0.851, p<0.01), and negatively correlated with age in most retinal layers (-0.362<β<-0.179, p<0.01), except for the RPE (β = 0.456, p<0.01), outer nuclear layer and photoreceptor layer (p>0.05). There was no relationship between retinal optical intensity and sex, height, weight, SE, axial length, disc area and R/D area ratio.

Conclusions

There was a specific pattern of distribution of retinal optical intensity in different regions. The optical intensity was affected by image quality and age. Image quality can be used as a reference for normalization. The effect of age needs to be taken into consideration when using OCT for diagnosis.     

Local habitat condition rather than geographic distance determines the genetic structure of Tamarix chinensis populations in Yellow River Delta,China

Tree Genetics &; Genomes - To breed a new variety of coffee (Coffea arabica) requires approximately 25&;nbsp;years due to the long generation time (5–6&;nbsp;years) of this perennial...     

Predictive functional profiling using marker gene sequences and community diversity analyses of microbes in full-scale anaerobic sludge digesters

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is widely used in treating the sewage sludge, as it can reduce the amount of sludge, eliminate pathogens and produce biofuel. To enhance the operational performance and stability of anaerobic bioreactors, operational and conventional chemical data from full-scale sludge anaerobic digesters were collected over a 2-year period and summarized, and the microbial community diversity of the sludge sample was investigated at various stages of the AD process. For the purpose of distinguishing between the functional and community diversity of the microbes, Phylogenetic Investigation of Communities by Reconstruction of Unobserved States (PICRUSt) software was used to impute the prevalence of 16S rDNA marker gene sequences in the difference in various sludge samples. Meanwhile, a taxa analysis was also carried out to investigate the different sludge samples. The microbial community diversity analysis of one AD sludge sample showed that the most dominant bacterial genera were Saccharicrinis, Syntrophus, Anaerotruncus and Thermanaerothrix. Among archaea, acetoclastic Methanosaeta represented 56.0 %, and hydrogenotrophic Methanospirillum, Methanoculleus, Methanothermus and Methanolinea accounted for 41.3 % of all methanogens. The taxa, genetic and functional prediction analyses of the feedstock and AD sludge samples suggested great community diversity differences between them. The taxa of bacteria in two AD sludge samples were considerably different, but the abundances of the functional KEGG pathways took on similar levels. The numbers of identified pathogens were significantly lower in the digested sludge than in the feedstock, but the PICRUSt results showed the difference in “human diseases” abundances in the level-1 pathway between the two sludge samples was small.