While similar in nature, the properties of silica and silsesquioxane are very different, but little is known about these differences. In this paper, functionalized silsesquioxane microparticles are ...synthesized by adapting the modified St\"ober method and post-functionalized with rhodamine-B. The as synthesized silsesquioxane particles are characterized by a variety of physical and chemical methods. The synthesized particles are amorphous and nonporous in nature and are less dense than silica. While silsesquioxane and silica have some similar physical properties from their siloxane core, the organic functional group of silsesquioxane and the one-half oxygen difference in its structure impact many other properties of these particles like their charging behavior in liquids. These differences not only allow for the ease surface modification as compared to that necessary to modify silica, but also the use in a variety of colloidal systems that due to pH or electrolyte concentrations may not be suitable for silica particles. Keywords: silsesquioxane, Stober method, density, morphology, zeta potential
Anatomical and physiological characters of the leaf surface and its physico-chemical environment substantially influence the density and diversity of phyllosphere-inhabiting microorganisms, which may ...include natural antagonists of important pathogens. The objective of this investigation was to quantify the phyllosphere (i.e. leaf surface) microbial population in a range of rice varieties grown in Sri Lanka and to identify the leaf anatomical and physiological characters that determine the density and diversity of phyllosphere microbes. Fifteen rice varieties including both traditional and new high-yielding varieties were used in a planthouse experiment and a field experiment in two consecutive seasons to quantify the phyllosphere microbial population and measure leaf characters that may influence it. There were highly significant intervarietal variations in the density and diversity of epiphytic bacterial, fungal and total microbial populations under both planthouse and field conditions. However, there was no difference between traditional and new, high-yielding varieties in their capacity to harbour epiphytic microbes in the phyllosphere. Total microbial density (TMD) under both conditions showed positive correlations with leaf hair density, stomatal density and transpiration rate. Under planthouse conditions, TMD was also positively correlated with leaf hair length and negatively correlated with leaf temperature. These correlations can be explained in terms of providing favourable microsites on the phylloplane for epiphytic microbial growth.
Hyperspectral unmixing (HU) has become an important technique in exploiting hyperspectral data since it decomposes a mixed pixel into a collection of endmembers weighted by fractional abundances. The ...endmembers of a hyperspectral image (HSI) are more likely to be generated by independent sources and be mixed in a macroscopic degree before arriving at the sensor element of the imaging spectrometer as mixed spectra. Over the past few decades, many attempts have focused on imposing auxiliary constraints on the conventional nonnegative matrix factorization (NMF) framework in order to effectively unmix these mixed spectra. As a promising step toward finding an optimum constraint to extract endmembers, this paper presents a novel blind HU algorithm, referred to as Kurtosis-based Smooth Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (KbSNMF) which incorporates a novel constraint based on the statistical independence of the probability density functions of endmember spectra. Imposing this constraint on the conventional NMF framework promotes the extraction of independent endmembers while further enhancing the parts-based representation of data. Experiments conducted on diverse synthetic HSI datasets (with numerous numbers of endmembers, spectral bands, pixels, and noise levels) and three standard real HSI datasets demonstrate the validity of the proposed KbSNMF algorithm compared to several state-of-the-art NMF-based HU baselines. The proposed algorithm exhibits superior performance especially in terms of extracting endmember spectra from hyperspectral data; therefore, it could uplift the performance of recent deep learning HU methods which utilize the endmember spectra as supervisory input data for abundance extraction.
Smartphone has become one of the most significant piece of technology that humans were able to produce in the 21st century. It has become our life companion; hence the features of the smartphones ...have developed in advance. But, some features may not work as expected. For instance, auto brightness changing feature is now actualized with smartphones, yet we alter the brightness according to our preference. In the same manner, considering the volume of our smartphone it doesn't change according to our preference subsequently. This research will develop a mobile application ("RE-IN") to overcome this issue for Android smartphones. Since android smartphones allow accessing its hardware layer we can roll out improvements as we need, yet Apple doesn't permit to proceed with its hardware layer thus hard to do this for the iPhone users. By utilizing the RE-IN mobile application users may have to encounter an optimal brightness and volume on their Android smartphones agreeing the present condition of smartphone users are in. RE- IN application will keep running as a background application on an Android smartphone. When the client changes the brightness and volume as his/her preference. At that point, the reinforcement learning algorithm over the time application will distinguish how to control user's smartphone's brightness and volume relying upon the user's circumstance. When client surrounding is loaded with light, the framework will modify brightness for his/her preference. The client doesn't need to do this manually. Moreover when the client is at the too much boisterous place all of a sudden gets a call from someone; client's smartphone amplifier volume will change consequently and solaces the client's discussion. To actualize this framework it is relied upon to reinforcement learning and machine learning as the research area. By finishing the literature review, research group unable to find an Android mobile application which automates the process of volume and brightness of the Android smartphone as per user preference. After using the reinforcement learning algorithm to learn the data set then distribute the process, using client-server model and come up with a clustering algorithm(K-means algorithm) to share common attributes by considering geographical area which they live in and variables like age, gender, how they interact with the device etc. In addition, this system will identify abnormal behaviors of some particular users. RE-IN will identify the users who are keeping volume level to the highest and brightness level to its maximum and notify them in advance.
We report precision determinations of the beam normal single spin asymmetries (\(A_n\)) in the elastic scattering of 0.95 and 2.18~GeV electrons off \(^{12}\)C, \(^{40}\)Ca, \(^{48}\)Ca, and ...\(^{208}\)Pb at very forward angles where the most detailed theoretical calculations have been performed. The first measurements of \(A_n\) for \(^{40}\)Ca and \(^{48}\)Ca are found to be similar to that of \(^{12}\)C, consistent with expectations thus demonstrating the validity of theoretical calculations for nuclei with Z~\(\leq20\). We also report \(A_n\) for \(^{208}\)Pb at two new momentum transfers (Q\(^2\)) extending the previous measurement. Our new data confirm the surprising result previously reported, with all three data points showing significant disagreement with the results from the \(Z\leq 20\) nuclei. These data confirm our basic understanding of the underlying dynamics that govern \(A_n\) for nuclei containing \(\lesssim 50\) nucleons, but point to the need for further investigation to understand the unusual \(A_n\) behaviour discovered for scattering off \(^{208}\)Pb.
We report a precise measurement of the parity-violating asymmetry \(A_{\rm PV}\) in the elastic scattering of longitudinally polarized electrons from \(^{48}{\rm Ca}\). We measure \(A_{\rm PV} ...=2668\pm 106\ {\rm (stat)}\pm 40\ {\rm (syst)}\) parts per billion, leading to an extraction of the neutral weak form factor \(F_{\rm W} (q=0.8733\) fm\(^{-1}) = 0.1304 \pm 0.0052 \ {\rm (stat)}\pm 0.0020\ {\rm (syst)}\) and the charge minus the weak form factor \(F_{\rm ch} - F_{\rm W} = 0.0277\pm 0.0055\). The resulting neutron skin thickness \(R_n-R_p=0.121 \pm 0.026\ {\rm (exp)} \pm 0.024\ {\rm (model)}\)~fm is relatively thin yet consistent with many model calculations. The combined CREX and PREX results will have implications for future energy density functional calculations and on the density dependence of the symmetry energy of nuclear matter.
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