scholarly journals The anisotropy in the optical constants of quartz crystals for soft X-rays

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Andrle ◽  
P. Hönicke ◽  
J. Vinson ◽  
R. Quintanilha ◽  
Q. Saadeh ◽  
...  

The refractive index of a y-cut SiO2 crystal surface is reconstructed from orientation-dependent soft X-ray reflectometry measurements in the energy range from 45 to 620 eV. Owing to the anisotropy of the crystal structure in the (100) and (001) directions, a significant deviation of the measured reflectance at the Si L 2,3 and O K absorption edges is observed. The anisotropy in the optical constants reconstructed from these data is also confirmed by ab initio Bethe–Salpeter equation calculations for the O K edge. This new experimental data set expands the existing literature data for quartz crystal optical constants significantly, particularly in the near-edge regions.

1995 ◽  
Vol 59 (397) ◽  
pp. 677-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Lennie ◽  
S. A. T. Redfern ◽  
P. F. Schofield ◽  
D. J. Vaughan

AbstractMackinawite, tetragonal FeS, has been synthesised by reacting iron with Na2S solutions. A Rietveld structure refinement of X-ray powder diffraction data, recorded using X-rays monochromated from synchrotron radiation with a wavelength of 0.6023 Å, has been performed. The structure has been refined in the tetragonal space group, P4/nmm, and has the following cell parameters: a = 3.6735(4), c = 5.0328(7) Å, V = 67.914(24) Å3. Our refinement shows that the FeS4 tetrahedron in mackinawite is almost perfectly regular, with a much smaller distortion than has been previously reported. An improved X-ray diffraction data set is provided.


2011 ◽  
Vol 286 (41) ◽  
pp. 35699-35707 ◽  
Author(s):  
Attila Iliás ◽  
Károly Liliom ◽  
Brigitte Greiderer-Kleinlercher ◽  
Stephan Reitinger ◽  
Günter Lepperdinger

Hyaluronan (HA), a polymeric glycosaminoglycan ubiquitously present in higher animals, is hydrolyzed by hyaluronidases (HAases). Here, we used bee HAase as a model enzyme to study the HA-HAase interaction. Located in close proximity to the active center, a bulky surface loop, which appears to obstruct one end of the substrate binding groove, was found to be functionally involved in HA turnover. To better understand kinetic changes in substrate interaction, binding of high molecular weight HA to catalytically inactive HAase was monitored by means of quartz crystal microbalance technology. Replacement of the delimiting loop by a tetrapeptide interconnection increased the affinity for HA up to 100-fold, with a KD below 1 nm being the highest affinity among HA-binding proteins surveyed so far. The experimental data of HA-HAase interaction were further validated showing best fit to the theoretically proposed sequential two-site model. Besides the one, which had been shown previously in course of x-ray structure determination, a previously unrecognized binding site works in conjunction with an unbinding loop that facilitates liberation of hydrolyzed HA.


Author(s):  
Matthew Wilding ◽  
Colin Scott ◽  
Thomas S. Peat ◽  
Janet Newman

The NAD-dependent malonate-semialdehyde dehydrogenase KES23460 fromPseudomonassp. strain AAC makes up half of a bicistronic operon responsible for β-alanine catabolism to produce acetyl-CoA. The KES23460 protein has been heterologously expressed, purified and used to generate crystals suitable for X-ray diffraction studies. The crystals belonged to space groupP212121and diffracted X-rays to beyond 3 Å resolution using the microfocus beamline of the Australian Synchrotron. The structure was solved using molecular replacement, with a monomer from PDB entry 4zz7 as the search model.


Minerals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlotta Giacobbe ◽  
Jonathan Wright ◽  
Dario Di Giuseppe ◽  
Alessandro Zoboli ◽  
Mauro Zapparoli ◽  
...  

Nowadays, due to the adverse health effects associated with exposure to asbestos, its removal and thermal inertization has become one of the most promising ways for reducing waste risk management. Despite all the advances in structure analysis of fibers and characterization, some problems still remain that are very hard to solve. One challenge is the structure analysis of natural micro- and nano-crystalline samples, which do not form crystals large enough for single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD), and their analysis is often hampered by reflection overlap and the coexistence of multiple fibres linked together. In this paper, we have used nano-focused synchrotron X-rays to refine the crystal structure of a micrometric tremolite fibres from Val d’Ala, Turin (Italy) after various heat treatment. The structure of the original fibre and after heating to 800 °C show minor differences, while the fibre that was heated at 1000 °C is recrystallized into pyroxene phases and cristobalite.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 1433-1443
Author(s):  
C. Jansing ◽  
H. Wahab ◽  
H. Timmers ◽  
A. Gaupp ◽  
H.-C. Mertins

The complex refractive index of many materials is poorly known in the soft X-ray range across absorption edges. This is due to saturation effects that occur there in total-electron-yield and fluorescence-yield spectroscopy and that are strongest at resonance energies. Aiming to obtain reliable optical constants, a procedure that reconciles electron-yield measurements and reflection spectroscopy by correcting these saturation effects is presented. The procedure takes into account the energy- and polarization-dependence of the photon penetration depth as well as the creation efficiency for secondary electrons and their escape length. From corrected electron-yield spectra the absorption constants and the imaginary parts of the refractive index of the material are determined. The real parts of the index are subsequently obtained through a Kramers–Kronig transformation. These preliminary optical constants are refined by simulating reflection spectra and adapting them, so that measured reflection spectra are reproduced best. The efficacy of the new procedure is demonstrated for graphite. The optical constants that have been determined for linearly polarized synchrotron light incident with p- and s-geometry provide a detailed and reliable representation of the complex refractive index of the material near π- and σ-resonances. They are also suitable for allotropes of graphite such as graphene.


2006 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 743-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Andrefsky

The relative amount of retouch on stone tools is central to many archaeological studies linking stone tool assemblages to broader issues of human social and economic land-use strategies. Unfortunately, most retouch measures deal with flake and blade tools and few (if any) have been developed for hafted bifaces and projectile points. This paper introduces a new index for measuring and comparing amount of retouch on hafted bifaces and projectile points that can be applied regardless of size or typological variance. The retouch index is assessed initially with an experimental data set of hafted bifaces that were dulled and resharpened on five occasions. The retouch index is then applied to a hafted biface assemblage made from tool stone that has been sourced by X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). Results of both assessments show that the hafted biface retouch index (HRI) is effective for determining the amount of retouch and the degree to which the hafted bifaces have been curated.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C1138-C1138
Author(s):  
Chiaki Tsuboi ◽  
Kazuki Aburaya ◽  
Shingo Higuchi ◽  
Fumiko Kimura ◽  
Masataka Maeyama ◽  
...  

We have developed magnetically oriented microcrystal array (MOMA) technique that enables single crystal X-ray diffraction analyses from microcrystalline powder. In this method, microcrystals suspended in a UV-curable monomer matrix are there-dimensionally aligned by special rotating magnetic field, followed by consolidation of the matrix by photopolymerization. From thus achieved MOMAs, we have been succeeded in crystal structure analysis for some substances [1, 2]. Though MOMA method is an effective technique, it has some problems as follows: in a MOMA, the alignment is deteriorated during the consolidation process. In addition, the sample microcrystals cannot be recovered from a MOMA. To overcome these problems, we performed an in-situ X-ray diffraction measurement using a three-dimensional magnetically oriented microcrystal suspension (3D MOMS) of L-alanine. An experimental setting of the in-situ X-ray measurement of MOMS is schematically shown in the figure. L-alanine microcrystal suspension was poured into a glass capillary and placed on the rotating unit equipped with a pair of neodymium magnets. Rotating X-ray chopper with 10°-slits was placed between the collimator and the suspension. By using this chopper, it was possible to expose the X-ray only when the rotating MOMS makes a specific direction with respect to the impinging X-ray. This has the same effect as the omega oscillation in conventional single crystal measurement. A total of 22 XRD images of 10° increments from 0° to 220° were obtained. The data set was processed by using conventional software to obtain three-dimensional molecular structure of L-alanine. The structure is in good agreement with that reported for the single crystal. R1 and wR2 were 6.53 and 17.4 %, respectively. RMSD value between the determined molecular structure and the reported one was 0.0045 Å. From this result, we conclude that this method can be effective and practical to be used widely for crystal structure analyses.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Hall ◽  
Dmitry Goldgof ◽  
Rahul Paul ◽  
Gregory M. Goldgof

<p>Testing for COVID-19 has been unable to keep up with the demand. Further, the false negative rate is projected to be as high as 30% and test results can take some time to obtain. X-ray machines are widely available and provide images for diagnosis quickly. This paper explores how useful chest X-ray images can be in diagnosing COVID-19 disease. We have obtained 135 chest X-rays of COVID-19 and 320 chest X-rays of viral and bacterial pneumonia. </p><p> A pre-trained deep convolutional neural network, Resnet50 was tuned on 102 COVID-19 cases and 102 other pneumonia cases in a 10-fold cross validation. The results were </p><p> an overall accuracy of 89.2% with a COVID-19 true positive rate of 0.8039 and an AUC of 0.95. Pre-trained Resnet50 and VGG16 plus our own small CNN were tuned or trained on a balanced set of COVID-19 and pneumonia chest X-rays. An ensemble of the three types of CNN classifiers was applied to a test set of 33 unseen COVID-19 and 218 pneumonia cases. The overall accuracy was 91.24% with the true positive rate for COVID-19 of 0.7879 with 6.88% false positives for a true negative rate of 0.9312 and AUC of 0.94. </p><p> This preliminary study has flaws, most critically a lack of information about where in the disease process the COVID-19 cases were and the small data set size. More COVID-19 case images at good resolution will enable a better answer to the question of how useful chest X-rays can be for diagnosing COVID-19.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_6) ◽  
Author(s):  
N Baig ◽  
M Ferrari ◽  
A Lukaszewicz

Abstract Background There is a longstanding culture of repeat x-rays after total knee replacement (TKR) as part of follow up, often combined with a clinic review. This is to check that the prosthesis is in a satisfactory position. There are inherently a number of issues with this historic approach including exposure of patients to further radiation who may be asymptomatic, time delays in busy clinics or x-ray departments and costs. Objectives The aim of this audit was to assess whether follow up plain films after TKR are methodically undertaken and of benefit to confirm satisfactory appearance if immediate post -operative x-rays were unremarkable. The findings of a six month follow up x-ray was specifically evaluated. The secondary aim was to establish the timing of further follow up x-rays within the department. Method 200 patients were included within the analysis, they all received a TKR at a major trauma centre, over a one-year period between December 2017 and December 2018. Results It was found that 100% of those patients having a post-operative film had a satisfactory appearance. 78% of patients had at least one further follow op x-ray of which 99.4% were satisfactory. Up to five follow up x-rays were taken with 53.5% of patients having a follow up x-ray at 6 months. Conclusions From the above results there is minimal, if any, evidence within the data set to support routine, additional follow up imaging if initial post-operative films are satisfactory, and the patient is asymptomatic.


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