Uniform Polarization Scattering With Fiber-Coil-Based Polarization Controllers

A detailed study of fiber-coil-based polarization controllers (PCs) is performed. First, a method to deterministically calculate the PC configuration in order to transform between any two states of polarization is presented. In a second stage, the case in which the configuration angles are randomly changed is studied. The cases of a single PC and of the system obtained with the concatenation of several PCs are analyzed. For both cases, a general expression for the variance of the Stokes parameters is obtained. Using this expression, it is demonstrated that it is possible to achieve uniform polarization scattering using a concatenation of fiber-coil-based PCs. Finally, it is shown that fiber-coil-based PCs can be used to emulate both first- and second-order polarization-mode dispersions     

A series of novel double perovskite oxides NaMTi<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>6</Subscript> (M = Eu,Sm, and Gd): preparation,characterization and photocatalytic studies under visible and solarlight irradiation

The photocatalytic activity of sol–gel synthesized double perovskite type oxides NaEuTi₂O₆(NETO), NaSmTi₂O₆ (NSTO), and NaGdTi₂O₆ (NGTO) powders on degradation of methylene blue (MB) dye was demonstrated for the first time under visible light as well as sunlight irradiation. The obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction, UV–Visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy equipped with X-ray energy-dispersion spectrometry. All the three samples have shown photocatalytic activity for degradation of MB under sunlight and visible light irradiation and their photocatalytic activity followed the order of NGTO > NETO > NSTO. The superior activity of NGTO is ascribed to the higher amount of hydroxyl radicals generated in the photocatalytic reaction.     

Time-Dependent Quantum-Mechanical Approaches to the Continuous Spectrum: Scattering Resonances in a Finite Box

Several novel aspects of scattering resonances are studied. An expression, valid for a finite box, relating the continuum phase shift with the energy shift and unperturbed level separation is proposed and applied to obtain the resonance parameters. The effect of the resonance on propagating a wavepacket in imaginary time is studied. It is observed that the resonance strongly affects the cumulants of the energy distribution. In particular, a local minimum of the first derivative of the energy with respect to time (proportional to the second cumulant) serves to estimate the resonance energy and wavefunction. Once the estimate is known, the autocorrelation function is used to evaluate the resonance width. Alternatively, a new iterative approach is developed that is capable of selectively yielding an arbitrary band of energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions on a grid. This method is applied to give those energy levels that are of interest for the discrete computation of the resonant phase shift, i.e., those close to resonance. Exact (analytical) and approximate results are in good agreement for a particular separable potential model in one dimension. These methods can be extended to realistic potentials in higher dimensions.     

Performance of a three-element thin film detector

A nuclear charged particle detector has been designed and fabricated at the University of Florida for use in identifying the nuclear charge Z and mass number A of low energy (1 MeV/amu) heavy mass ions. The detector consists of a stack of three sequential thin film detectors (made from NE-102A plastic scintillator) for three successive measurements of the specific luminescence ΔL/Δx and velocity of a transiting ion and a terminal surface barrier detector for measuring the ion residual energy. This detector assembly was tested by measuring its response to various isotopes of germanium and selenium ions accelerated to selected energies between 53 and 169 MeV and then scattered from a thin gold target foil. The tests were performed to obtain quantitative information on the ability of the detector system to identify the nuclear Z of an impinging ion and to test the 0810 1076 V 3 advantage of having three successive measurements of ΔL/Δx from three sequential and independent thin film detectors. It was determined that below 2 MeV/amu the detector response was dependent on particle velocity but independent of particle mass and below about 0.9 MeV/amu the detector was not able to distinguish between ions having two units difference in Z, probably due to similarities in ionic charge state distributions. It was also determined that the use of three detectors reduced the FWHM of the TFD response by 54%.     

Towards a Sustainable Green Design for Next-Generation Networks

Recently distributed real-time database systems are intended to manage large volumes of dispersed data. To develop distributed real-time data processing, a reality and stay competitive well defined protocols and algorithms must be required to access and manipulate the data. An admission control policy is a major task to access real-time data which has become a challenging task due to random arrival of user requests and transaction timing constraints. This paper proposes an optimal admission control policy based on deep reinforcement algorithm and memetic algorithm which can efficiently handle the load balancing problem without affecting the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters. A Markov decision process (MDP) is formulated for admission control problem, which provides an optimized solution for dynamic resource sharing. The possible solutions for MDP problem are obtained by using reinforcement learning and linear programming with an average reward. The deep reinforcement learning algorithm reformulates the arrived requests from different users and admits only the needed request, which improves the number of sessions of the system. Then we frame the load balancing problem as a dynamic and stochastic assignment problem and obtain optimal control policies using memetic algorithm. Therefore proposed admission control problem is changed to memetic logic in such a way that session corresponds to individual elements of the initial chromosome. The performance of proposed optimal admission control policy is compared with other approaches through simulation and it depicts that the proposed system outperforms the other techniques in terms of throughput, execution time and miss ratio which leads to better QoS.

     

Goal‐oriented adaptivity using unconventional error representations for the multidimensional Helmholtz equation

In goal‐oriented adaptivity, the error in the quantity of interest is represented using the error functions of the direct and adjoint problems. This error representation is subsequently bounded above by element‐wise error indicators that are used to drive optimal refinements. In this work, we propose to replace, in the error representation, the adjoint problem by an alternative operator. The main advantage of the proposed approach is that, when judiciously selecting such alternative operator, the corresponding upper bound of the error representation becomes sharper, leading to a more efficient goal‐oriented adaptivity. While the method can be applied to a variety of problems, we focus here on two‐ and three‐dimensional (2‐D and 3‐D) Helmholtz problems. We show via extensive numerical experimentation that the upper bounds provided by the alternative error representations are sharper than the classical ones and lead to a more robust p‐adaptive process. We also provide guidelines for finding operators delivering sharp error representation upper bounds. We further extend the results to a convection‐dominated diffusion problem as well as to problems with discontinuous material coefficients. Finally, we consider a sonic logging‐while‐drilling problem to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method.     

Polarization Scattering Property of Cascaded Polarization Controllers

The relation between the allowed range of variation of polarization controller wave‐plates angles and the respective polarization scattering properties is investigated. It is demonstrated that a nearly uniform polarization scattering over the Poincaré sphere is obtained using a concatenation of three polarization controllers with angles randomly changed between ‐π/4 and π/4. It is also shown that an improvement of the scattering properties is obtained if the configuration angles are allowed to change between ‐π/2 and π/2.     

ATP hydrolysis induces an intermediate conformational state in GroEL

The conformational properties of the molecular chaperone GroEL in the presence of ATP, its non-hydrolyzable analog 5'-adenylimidodiphosphate (AMP-PNP), and ADP have been analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), Fourier-transform infra-red (FT-IR) and fluorescence spectroscopy. Nucleotide binding to one ring promotes a decrease in the Tm value of the GroEL thermal transition that is reversed when both rings are filled with nucleotide, indicating that the sequential occupation of the two protein rings by these nucleotides has different effects on the GroEL thermal denaturation process. In addition, ATP induces a conformational change in GroEL characterized by (a) the appearance of a reversible low temperature endotherm in the DSC profiles of the protein, and (b) an enhanced binding of the hydrophobic probe 8-anilino-naphthalene-1-sulfonate (ANS), which strictly depends on ATP hydrolysis. The similar sensitivity to K+ of the temperature range where activation of the GroEL ATPase activity, the low temperature endotherm, and the increase of the ANS fluorescence are abserved strongly indicates the existence of a conformational state of GroEL during ATP hydrolysis, different from that generated on ADP or AMP-PNP binding. To achieve this intermediate conformation, GroEL mainly modifies its tertiary and quaternary structures, leading to an increased exposure of hydrophobic surfaces, with minor rearrangements of its secondary structure.