A series of experiments is reported to identify and characterize the inactivation process in operation when drinking water, heavily contaminated with a Kenyan isolate of Escherichia coli, is stored in transparent plastic bottles that are then exposed to sunlight. The roles of optical and thermal inactivation mechanisms are studied in detail by simulating conditions of optical irradiance, water ...

Transparent, flexible and high efficient power sources are important components of organic electronic and optoelectronic devices. In this work, based on the principle of the previously demonstrated triboelectric generator, we demonstrate a new high-output, flexible and transparent nanogenerator by using transparent polymer materials. We have fabricated three types of regular and uniform polymer...

In this paper we present experimental results on propagation, coherence, and time delay estimation (TDE) in an acoustic microphone array. The primary goal is to understand the achievable accuracy of acoustic TDE using low-cost, commercial off the shelf (COTS) speakers and microphones. In addition, the experiment seeks to provide an empirical understanding of the effects of center frequency, ban...

A new TDE technique using the CPSP function weighed on each band is proposed. Observed and theoretical CPSP spectra are uniformly divided into several bands, and time delay having maximum cross correlation coefficient between observed and theoretical CPSP functions on each band is searched. Then the observed CPSP function is weighted according to the phase linearity on each band. A weighted CPS...

BACKGROUND North American surgical education is beginning to shift toward competency-based medical education, in which trainees complete their training only when competence has been demonstrated through objective milestones. Pressure is mounting to embrace competency-based medical education because of the perception that it provides more transparent standards and increased public accountability...

Polymer solar cells have attracted broad research interest because of their advantageous solution processing capability and formation of low-cost, flexible, and large area electronic devices. However, the efficiency of polymer solar cells is still low compared to that of inorganic solar cells. Therefore, it is a challenge to find a polymer that has all the required properties for high efficienc...

Brain tissue retraction is frequently required to reach deep intra-axial lesions, and the quest for an ideal retractor that would protect the underlying brain tissue continues. Despite the availability of multiple retractors, the incidence of brain retraction injury remains high and has been reported to be 5% to 10%. A recently developed transparent tubular retractor appears to provide several ...

A new synthesis and processing route for preparing multilayer interference coatings on plastic substrates has been developed. For this purpose, alcoholic sols of surface modi®ed (3 glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane, GPTS) SiO2 and TiO2 particles with sizes of 10 and 4 nm, respectively, were synthesized. Layers were prepared by dip coating, subsequent UV curing (2.1 J/cm) and thermal post treatmen...

Plastic bags are very useful containers for the storage of blood and blood products since they are relatively transparent, hard to break, can be sealed aseptically with a radio-frequency current, and can be centrifuged for the isolation of blood components. In order to make the plastic more flexible, various agents are added, of which the most common is di- (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP). This...

Any assessment of plastic contamination in the marine environment requires knowledge of the polymer type and the additive content of microplastics. Sequential pyrolysis-gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (Pyr-GC/MS) was applied to simultaneously identify polymer types of microplastic particles and associated organic plastic additives (OPAs). In addition, a scanning electron microsc...