Coumarin-Modified Starch Fluorescent Nanoparticles as Sensor of Fe3+ and Zn2+ ions Utilizing Dynamic Quenching and Chelation Mechanisms.

Zinc and iron are two essential trace minerals that play a pivotal role in maintaining optimal health and well-being in the human body. Despite being required in relatively small quantities, their significance can be understated as they participate in a wide array of critical physiological processes such as oxygen transport, DNA synthesis, controlling nutrient availability, etc. Understanding the distribution and behavior of these ions in natural water bodies is essential for assessing water quality, studying ecological processes, and managing environmental impacts. In this study, we have developed a dual fluorescence probe using starch which was functionalized with coumarin derivatives, for efficient detection of Fe3+ and Zn2+ ions. This structure led a self-assembled starch/coumarin (SC) fluorescent nanoparticles with strong fluorescence intensity under ultraviolet light (365 nm). The quenching effect of Fe3+ on the SC fluorescent probe enabled efficient specific detection of Fe3+. Furthermore, Zn2+ ions increased fluorescence intensity of coumarin compounds (λemission = 459). This phenomenon occurs when the coumarin compound forms a complex or interacts with the zinc ion, resulting in enhanced fluorescence emission. In summary, the developed fluorescent probe offered a promising approach for sensitive and specific detection of iron and zinc ions in aqueous solutions.

Assessment of procrastination in providing nursing care among Iranian nursing staff.

AIM: This study aimed to investigate procrastination in nursing care providing. DESIGN: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 125 nurses in ICUs, PICUs, NICUs, and surgery wards, who were selected by census sampling in Iran. METHODS: The data were collected using the Procrastination Scale, which consisted of 25 items relating to 3 factors. Data were analyzed using statistics, Chi-square, Friedman test, analysis of variance, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests. RESULTS: Overall, 37% of the participants showed very high or high procrastination. Most of the procrastination was observed in the "Task aversion" (44.2%). ANOVA indicated that the mean total procrastination score had a significant relationship with age (p = 0.013), work experience (p = 0.006), and marital status (p = 0.02). Nurses with permanent employment (p = 0.014) and lower education (p = 0.009) and women (p = 0.023) were much more likely to procrastinate the provision of care. CONCLUSION: It is recommended to adopt appropriate management strategies and take adequate measures to reduce procrastination, considering the existence of procrastination among nurses and its adverse impact on the quality of care.

Coherent atomic mirror formed by randomly distributed ions inside a crystal.

Spatial distribution of atoms plays an important role in the interaction of atomic ensembles and electromagnetic fields. In this Letter, we show that by spatio-spectral tailoring of atomic absorption, one can effectively carve out a periodic array from randomly distributed atomic ensembles hosted by a solid-state crystal. Furthermore, we observe collective atomic resonances and coherent backscattering of light from rare-earth-doped crystals. Coherent backscattering as high as 20% was observed for light at telecom wavelength from Er ions, forming an effective array with over 5000 centers.

Controlling light emission by engineering atomic geometries in silicon photonics.

By engineering atomic geometries composed of nearly 1000 atomic segments embedded in micro-resonators, we observe Bragg resonances induced by the atomic lattice at the telecommunication wavelength. The geometrical arrangement of erbium atoms into a lattice inside a silicon nitride (SiN) microring resonator reduces the scattering loss at a wavelength commensurate with the lattice. We confirm dependency of light emission to the atomic positions and lattice spacing and also observe Fano interference between resonant modes in the system.

Heralded Interaction Control between Quantum Systems.

Quantum mechanical expectation values for subsets can differ substantially from those for the whole ensemble. This implies that the effect of interactions between two systems can be altered substantially by conditioning. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that, for two light fields ψ_{S} (signal) and ψ_{A} (ancilla) that have only weakly interacted with one another, subsequent measurements on the ancilla can produce substantial conditional amplification, attenuation, or phase shift of ψ_{S}. We observe conditional signal power changes over a large range of 30, and phase shift up to π/2, induced by measurements in ancilla bases that differ only slightly from one another. The method is generically applicable to a variety of systems, and allows one to modify or boost a given interaction by trading in success probability for interaction strength.

Large conditional single-photon cross-phase modulation.

Deterministic optical quantum logic requires a nonlinear quantum process that alters the phase of a quantum optical state by π through interaction with only one photon. Here, we demonstrate a large conditional cross-phase modulation between a signal field, stored inside an atomic quantum memory, and a control photon that traverses a high-finesse optical cavity containing the atomic memory. This approach avoids fundamental limitations associated with multimode effects for traveling optical photons. We measure a conditional cross-phase shift of [Formula: see text] (and up to [Formula: see text] by postselection on photons that remain in the system longer than average) between the retrieved signal and control photons, and confirm deterministic entanglement between the signal and control modes by extracting a positive concurrence. By upgrading to a state-of-the-art cavity, our system can reach a coherent phase shift of π at low loss, enabling deterministic and universal photonic quantum logic.

Optomechanical frequency comb memory.

Typical nano-mechanical oscillator arrays exhibit a mechanical frequency distribution arising from the imprecision in the nanofabrication process, thus hindering their collective dynamics. We tailor the inhomogeneously broadened spectrum of a nano-oscillator ensemble to unravel the collective dynamics of mechanical oscillators in an optomechanical array. We show that by engineering tunable optomechanical interactions, the instantaneous phase matching between the oscillators reveals collective dynamics in the form of a photon-phonon echo excitation without the need for active frequency tuning. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate that by controlling such collective dynamics, broadband and scalable coherent light storage can be realized. An optomechanical memory of this kind enables information storage over a wide band of wavelengths, including the telecommunications band and, importantly, can be integrated into the silicon photonic networks.

Cavity Cooling of Many Atoms.

We demonstrate cavity cooling of all motional degrees of freedom of an atomic ensemble using light that is far detuned from the atomic transitions by several gigahertz. The cooling is achieved by cavity-induced frequency-dependent asymmetric enhancement of the atomic emission spectrum, thereby extracting thermal kinetic energy from the atomic system. Within 100 ms, the atomic temperature is reduced from 200 to 10 µK, where the final temperature is mainly limited by the linewidth of the cavity. In principle, the technique can be applied to molecules and atoms with complex internal energy structure.

Partially Nondestructive Continuous Detection of Individual Traveling Optical Photons.

We report the continuous and partially nondestructive measurement of optical photons. For a weak light pulse traveling through a slow-light optical medium (signal), the associated atomic-excitation component is detected by another light beam (probe) with the aid of an optical cavity. We observe strong correlations of g_{sp}^{(2)}=4.4(5) between the transmitted signal and probe photons. The observed (intrinsic) conditional nondestructive quantum efficiency ranges between 13% and 1% (65% and 5%) for a signal transmission range of 2% to 35%, at a typical time resolution of 2.5 µs. The maximal observed (intrinsic) device nondestructive quantum efficiency, defined as the product of the conditional nondestructive quantum efficiency and the signal transmission, is 0.5% (2.4%). The normalized cross-correlation function violates the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, confirming the nonclassical character of the correlations.

Coherent optical pulse sequencer for quantum applications.

The bandwidth and versatility of optical devices have revolutionized information technology systems and communication networks. Precise and arbitrary control of an optical field that preserves optical coherence is an important requisite for many proposed photonic technologies. For quantum information applications, a device that allows storage and on-demand retrieval of arbitrary quantum states of light would form an ideal quantum optical memory. Recently, significant progress has been made in implementing atomic quantum memories using electromagnetically induced transparency, photon echo spectroscopy, off-resonance Raman spectroscopy and other atom-light interaction processes. Single-photon and bright-optical-field storage with quantum states have both been successfully demonstrated. Here we present a coherent optical memory based on photon echoes induced through controlled reversible inhomogeneous broadening. Our scheme allows storage of multiple pulses of light within a chosen frequency bandwidth, and stored pulses can be recalled in arbitrary order with any chosen delay between each recalled pulse. Furthermore, pulses can be time-compressed, time-stretched or split into multiple smaller pulses and recalled in several pieces at chosen times. Although our experimental results are so far limited to classical light pulses, our technique should enable the construction of an optical random-access memory for time-bin quantum information, and have potential applications in quantum information processing.

Computational pathology: A survey review and the way forward.

Computational Pathology (CPath) is an interdisciplinary science that augments developments of computational approaches to analyze and model medical histopathology images. The main objective for CPath is to develop infrastructure and workflows of digital diagnostics as an assistive CAD system for clinical pathology, facilitating transformational changes in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer that are mainly address by CPath tools. With evergrowing developments in deep learning and computer vision algorithms, and the ease of the data flow from digital pathology, currently CPath is witnessing a paradigm shift. Despite the sheer volume of engineering and scientific works being introduced for cancer image analysis, there is still a considerable gap of adopting and integrating these algorithms in clinical practice. This raises a significant question regarding the direction and trends that are undertaken in CPath. In this article we provide a comprehensive review of more than 800 papers to address the challenges faced in problem design all-the-way to the application and implementation viewpoints. We have catalogued each paper into a model-card by examining the key works and challenges faced to layout the current landscape in CPath. We hope this helps the community to locate relevant works and facilitate understanding of the field's future directions. In a nutshell, we oversee the CPath developments in cycle of stages which are required to be cohesively linked together to address the challenges associated with such multidisciplinary science. We overview this cycle from different perspectives of data-centric, model-centric, and application-centric problems. We finally sketch remaining challenges and provide directions for future technical developments and clinical integration of CPath. For updated information on this survey review paper and accessing to the original model cards repository, please refer to GitHub. Updated version of this draft can also be found from arXiv.

Plastic debris in the digestive tract of sheep and goats: an increasing environmental contamination in Birjand, Iran.

A total of 230 goats and 185 sheep were evaluated in this cross-sectional observational study. After emptying the gastrointestinal tract, the size, location, adhesion and obstruction were examined. Twenty seven and half percent of sheep and 24 point 3 % of goats had foreign bodies. Most foreign bodies were plastic materials in sheep and goats. Forty percent of pregnant animals had foreign bodies. Drought and lack of adequate pastures in the past years have been a major cause of the swallowing of foreign objects by sheep and goats.

Reflectance and photophysical properties of rhodamine 6G/2-(4-methyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-7-yloxy) acetic acid as cold hybrid colorant.

Rhodamine 6G (Rh6G) is modified by ethylenediamine to obtain rhodamine with amine functional groups (Rh6G-NH2). Rh6G-NH2 as an initial core is used to bond coumarin derivatives. Synthesized fluorescent colorants are specified using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), proton and carbon nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR and 13C NMR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) to analyze the structure of the fluorescent pigments. Fluorescence microscopy, fluorescence spectrophotometer, and UV-visible-NIR reflectance spectra are used to demonstrate the optical properties. UV-Vis-NIR reflectance spectra showed that synthesized colorants were transparent in NIR region. Also, photophysical properties of 2-(4-methyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-7-yloxy) acetic acid (MOHCYAA), Rh6G-NH2, and hybrid 2-(4-methyl-2-oxo-2H-chromen-7-yloxy) acetic acid/rhodamine 6G (HMR) were investigated. Type of solvent had a strong effect on quantum yield. Rh6G-NH2 (ϕs = 0.66) and HMR (ϕs = 0.72) displayed the maximum quantum yield in ethanol due to good interaction with ethanol and the formation of ring-opened amide form of rhodamine group. Finally, Rh6G-NH2 and HMR displayed the maximum quantum yield in ethanol due to good interaction of structure with ethanol and the formation of ring-opened amide form of rhodamine group in compound.

Intensity instability and correlation in amplified multimode wave mixing.

The dynamics of optical nonlinearity in the presence of gain and feedback can be complex leading to chaos in certain regimes. Temporal, spectral, spatial, or polarization instability of optical fields can emerge from chaotic response of an optical [Formula: see text] or [Formula: see text] nonlinear medium placed between two cavity mirrors or before a single feedback mirror. The complex mode dynamics, high-order correlations, and transition to instability in these systems are not well known. We consider a [Formula: see text] medium with amplified four-wave mixing process and study noise and correlation between multiple optical modes. Although individual modes show intensity instability, we observe relative intensity noise reduction close to the standard quantum noise, limited by the camera speed. We observe a relative noise reduction of more than 20 dB and fourth-order intensity correlation between four spatial modes. More than 100 distinct correlated quadruple modes can be generated using this process.

Synthesis and characterization of fluorescence poly(amidoamine) dendrimer-based pigments.

In this work, we looked at how to make fluorescence hybrid poly(amidoamine) dendrimer (PAMAM) dendrimers using calcozine red 6G and coumarin end groups. After synthesis of ethylenediamine (EDA)-cored 4th generation PAMAM dendrimer (G4.0), surface functional groups is reacted with calcozine red 6G (Rh6G) and 7-methacryloyloxy-4-methylcoumarin. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR), and X-ray diffraction are used to characterize the structure of synthesized fluorescent hybrid dendrimers. Optical properties are demonstrated using a fluorescence spectrophotometer, and UV-Vis-NIR reflectance spectra. According to UV-Vis-NIR reflectance spectra, hybrid dendrimers were transparent in the NIR range. Moreover, quantum yield (Φs) of hybrid dendrimers was calculated in dimethylformamide (DMF), ethanol, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), and distilled water (H2O). Dendrimers in which Rh6G was utilized to modification showed the maximum quantum yield in ethanol due to great interaction of structure with ethanol and the arrangement of ring-opened amide shape of calcozine red 6G.

Double-blind randomized parallel-group clinical trial of efficacy of the combination fluoxetine plus modafinil versus fluoxetine plus placebo in the treatment of major depression.

BACKGROUND: There is growing interest in the identification of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of affective disorders, with modafinil being one promising substance. The purpose of the present investigation was to compare the efficacy of a combination of fluoxetine plus modafinil with that of fluoxetine plus placebo in the treatment of major depression in a 6-week double blind and placebo-controlled trial. METHODS: Forty-six adult outpatients who met the DSM-IV-TR criteria for major depression participated in the trial. Patients had a baseline Hamilton Rating Scale for depression score of at least 18. Patients were allocated in a random fashion, 23 to fluoxetine 40 mg/day plus modafinil 400 mg/day (200 mg bid) (morning and evening) and 23 to fluoxetine 40 mg/day plus placebo. Patients were assessed at baseline and after 1, 2, 4, and 6 weeks after start of medication. RESULTS: Forty-four patients completed the trial. Fluoxetine+modafinil and fluoxetine+placebo significantly decreased the Hamilton Rating Scale score for Depression over the trial period. However, the combination of fluoxetine and modafinil was significantly superior over fluoxetine alone in the treatment of symptoms of major depression. The difference between the two treatments was significant as indicated by the effect of group, the between-subjects factor (df = 1, F = 4.42, P = 0.046). There were no significant differences in the two groups in terms of observed side-effects. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest modafinil as a well-tolerated and potentially effective agent in combination with fluoxetine in the management of patients with major depression.

Convolutional Deblurring for Natural Imaging.

In this paper, we propose a novel design of image deblurring in the form of one-shot convolution filtering that can directly convolve with naturally blurred images for restoration. The problem of optical blurring is a common disadvantage to many imaging applications that suffer from optical imperfections. Despite numerous deconvolution methods that blindly estimate blurring in either inclusive or exclusive forms, they are practically challenging due to high computational cost and low image reconstruction quality. Both conditions of high accuracy and high speed are prerequisites for high-throughput imaging platforms in digital archiving. In such platforms, deblurring is required after image acquisition before being stored, previewed, or processed for high-level interpretation. Therefore, on-the-fly correction of such images is important to avoid possible time delays, mitigate computational expenses, and increase image perception quality. We bridge this gap by synthesizing a deconvolution kernel as a linear combination of finite impulse response (FIR) even-derivative filters that can be directly convolved with blurry input images to boost the frequency fall-off of the point spread function (PSF) associated with the optical blur. We employ a Gaussian low-pass filter to decouple the image denoising problem for image edge deblurring. Furthermore, we propose a blind approach to estimate the PSF statistics for two Gaussian and Laplacian models that are common in many imaging pipelines. Thorough experiments are designed to test and validate the efficiency of the proposed method using 2054 naturally blurred images across six imaging applications and seven state-of-the-art deconvolution methods.

Durable Perovskite UV Sensor Based on Engineered Size-Tunable Polydimethylsiloxane Microparticles Using a Facile Capillary Microfluidic Device from a High-Viscosity Precursor.

In this work, size-tunable polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microparticles are fabricated from a high-viscosity oil phase using a facile coflowing capillary microfluidic device and optimized aqueous phase composition. The dispersity of the microparticle size is tuned by engineering of the viscosity of the continuous phase and flow rate ratio that leads us to achieve monodisperse microparticles. Regarding the high potential of the PDMS microparticles for optical applications, efficient environmentally durable perovskite-based UV sensors are fabricated employing the designed size-tunable microparticles. Surprisingly, the UV sensors comprising CH3NH3PbBr3 perovskite quantum dots as UV-sensitive nanocrystals embedded in transparent PDMS microparticles are water resistant because of the high hydrophobicity of PDMS. Remarkably, the UV sensors show a photoluminescence quantum yield as high as 75% that can be employed effortlessly as reusable leak detectors in different fluidic working systems.

Focus Quality Assessment of High-Throughput Whole Slide Imaging in Digital Pathology.

One of the challenges facing the adoption of digital pathology workflows for clinical use is the need for automated quality control. As the scanners sometimes determine focus inaccurately, the resultant image blur deteriorates the scanned slide to the point of being unusable. Also, the scanned slide images tend to be extremely large when scanned at greater or equal 20X image resolution. Hence, for digital pathology to be clinically useful, it is necessary to use computational tools to quickly and accurately quantify the image focus quality and determine whether an image needs to be re-scanned. We propose a no-reference focus quality assessment metric specifically for digital pathology images that operate by using a sum of even-derivative filter bases to synthesize a human visual system-like kernel, which is modeled as the inverse of the lens' point spread function. This kernel is then applied to a digital pathology image to modify high-frequency image information deteriorated by the scanner's optics and quantify the focus quality at the patch level. We show in several experiments that our method correlates better with ground-truth z -level data than other methods, which is more computationally efficient. We also extend our method to generate a local slide-level focus quality heatmap, which can be used for automated slide quality control, and demonstrate the utility of our method for clinical scan quality control by comparison with subjective slide quality scores.

Effect of grape seed extract ointment on cesarean section wound healing: A double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial.

BACKGROUND: and purpose: Complications of the delayed recovery of cesarean section (CS) wound can include stress, discomfort, and dissatisfaction of the mother in the postpartum period. This study tried to determine the effect of grape seed extract ointment on CS wound healing. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial incorporating 129 women eligible for CS in eastern Iran. Participants were selected through convenience sampling method and were subsequently randomly assigned into three groups: 2.5% grape seed extract ointment, 5% grape seed extract ointment, and petrolatum. CS wound healing indices were assessed before the intervention, and 6 and 14 days after the intervention using the REEDA scale (redness, edema, ecchymosis, discharge, and approximation). RESULTS: The mean scores on days 6 and 14 after intervention were respectively 2.02 ±â€¯0.52 and 0.98 ±â€¯0.61 in the 5% ointment group, 2.83 ±â€¯0.54 and 1.58 ±â€¯0.67 in the 2.5% ointment group, and 2.91 ±â€¯0.51 and 1.55 ±â€¯0.74 in the petrolatum group. While the mean score in the 5% ointment group was significantly different from those of 2.5% ointment and petrolatum groups (P < 0.001), the mean score in the 2.5% ointment group was not significantly different from that of the petrolatum group on days 6 and 14 after intervention (P = 0.38 and P = 0.79, respectively). CONCLUSION: The current results suggest that 5% grape seed extract may have beneficial therapeutic effects in promoting CS wound healing.