Casimir free energy for massive fermions: a comparative study of various approaches

We compute the Casimir thermodynamic quantities for a massive fermion field between two parallel plates with the MIT boundary conditions, using three different general approaches and present explicit solutions for each. The Casimir thermodynamic quantities include the Casimir Helmholtz free energy, pressure, energy and entropy. The three general approaches that we use are based on the fundamental definition of Casimir thermodynamic quantities, the analytic continuation method represented by the zeta function method, and the zero temperature subtraction method. We include the renormalized versions of the latter two approaches as well, whereas the first approach does not require one. Within each general approach, we obtain the same results in a few different ways to ascertain the selected cancellations of infinities have been done correctly. We then do a comparative study of the three different general approaches and their results, and show that they are in principle not equivalent to each other and they yield in general different results. In particular, we show that the Casimir thermodynamic quantities calculated only by the first approach have all three properties of going to zero as the temperature, the mass of the field, or the distance between the plates increases.

Development and Fabrication of an Innovative Smart Tool to Monitor the Impact Carving Process on Brittle Stones and Marble

The art of sculpting is related to the processing of brittle materials, such as granite, marble, and stone, and is implemented using percussive hand tools or rotational roughing tools. The outcome of percussion carving is still directly related to the technique, experience, and capacity of the sculptor. Any attempt to automate the art of sculpturing is exhausted in the subtraction method of brittle materials using a rotating tool. In the process of percussion carving, there is no equivalent expertise. In this work, we present the design, manufacturing (3D printing and CNC machining), and use of a smart, percussion carving tool, either manually by the hand of a sculptor, adjusted in a percussive pneumatic hammer, or guided by a digitally driven machine. The scope is to measure and record the technological variables and sizes that describe and document the carving process through the sensors and electronic devices that the smart tool incorporates, the development and programming of which was implemented for the purposes of this work. The smart carving tool was meticulously tested in various carving stones and stressing scenarios to test the functionality and efficacy of the tool. All the tests were successfully implemented according to the specifications set.

Enhancement of image quality in planar Airy light-sheet microscopy via subtraction method

The use of propagation-invariant Airy beams enables a light-sheet microscopy with a large field-of-view. Without relying upon two-photon excitation or deconvolution-based processing to eliminate out-of focus blur caused by the side lobes, here, we present how the subtraction method is applied to enhance the image quality in digital scanned light-sheet microscopy with Airy beam. In the proposed method, planar Airy beam with the symmetric transversal structure is used to excite the sample. A hollow Airy beam with zero intensity at the focal plane is created, which is mainly used to excite the out-of-focus signal. By scanning the sample twice with the normal planar Airy beam and the hollow Airy beam, digital post-processing of the obtained images by subtraction allows for the rejection of out-of-focus blur and improves the optical sectioning, the axial resolution and the intensity distribution uniformity of the light-sheet microscopy.

Study on the Automatic Basketball Shooting System Based on the Background Subtraction Method

There are many drawbacks such as clustering, background updating, inaccurate testing results, and low anti-interference performance in traditional moving target detection theory. In our study, a background subtraction method to automatically capture the basketball shooting trajectory was used to eliminate the drawbacks of the fixed-point shooting system such as cumbersome installation and time and manpower consumption. It also can improve the accuracy and efficiency of moving target detection. We also synthetically compared to common methods including the optical flow method and interframe difference method. Results showed that the background subtraction method has better accuracy with an accuracy rate over about 90% than the interframe subtraction method (88%) and the optimal flow method (85%) and presents excellent robustness with considering variable speed and nonrigid objects. Meanwhile, the automatic detection system for basketball shooting based on background subtraction is built by coupling background subtraction with detection characteristics. The system detection speed built is further accelerated, and the image denoising is improved. The trajectory error rate is about 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5 for the background subtraction method, interframe subtraction method, and optimal flow method, respectively.

Different spectrophotometric methods manipulating ratio spectra for the assay of hydrocortisone acetate and clioquinol in their topical preparation

Simple and precise spectrophotometric methods for quantitative assay of a mixture of hydrocortisone acetate (HCA) and clioquinol (CL) were developed and validated through different mathematical manipulation pathways. The developed methods utilized ratio spectra for resolving binary mixtures including absorbance subtraction, ratio subtraction coupled with spectrum subtraction, constant multiplication, constant value, and derivative ratio. The proposed methods were proved to be specific by analysing the laboratory-prepared mixtures and were applied for the assay of topical preparation successfully. The methods were validated using ICH guidelines where accuracy, repeatability and intermediate precision were within the acceptable limits. The linearity range was found to be 2-22 for HCA and 1.5-7 µg/mL for CL in all proposed methods and 2-7 µg/mL for HCA and CL in absorbance subtraction method through using a unified regression equation. The findings were statistically evaluated with respect to the official and reported methods, demonstrating that there was no significant difference.

Incremental Diagnostic Value of CT Fractional Flow Reserve Using Subtraction Method in Patients with Severe Calcification: A Pilot Study

Although on-site workstation-based CT fractional flow reserve (CT-FFR) is an emerging method for assessing vessel-specific ischemia in coronary artery disease, severe calcification is a significant factor affecting CT-FFR’s diagnostic performance. The subtraction method significantly improves the diagnostic value with respect to anatomic stenosis for patients with severe calcification in coronary CT angiography (CCTA). We evaluated the diagnostic capability of CT-FFR using the subtraction method (subtraction CT-FFR) in patients with severe calcification. This study included 32 patients with 45 lesions with severe calcification (Agatston score >400) who underwent both CCTA and subtraction CCTA using 320-row area detector CT and also received invasive FFR within 90 days. The diagnostic capabilities of CT-FFR and subtraction CT-FFR were compared. The sensitivities, specificities, positive predictive values (PPVs), and negative predictive values (NPVs) of CT-FFR vs. subtraction CT-FFR for detecting hemodynamically significant stenosis, defined as FFR ≤ 0.8, were 84.6% vs. 92.3%, 59.4% vs. 75.0%, 45.8% vs. 60.0%, and 90.5% vs. 96.0%, respectively. The area under the curve for subtraction CT-FFR was significantly higher than for CT-FFR (0.84 vs. 0.70) (p = 0.04). The inter-observer and intra-observer variabilities of subtraction CT-FFR were 0.76 and 0.75, respectively. In patients with severe calcification, subtraction CT-FFR had an incremental diagnostic value over CT-FFR, increasing the specificity and PPV while maintaining the sensitivity and NPV with high reproducibility.

Summit: Automated Analysis of Arrayed Single-Cell Gel Electrophoresis

New pipelines are required to automate the quantitation of emerging high-throughput electrophoretic (EP) assessment of DNA damage, or proteoform expression in single cells. EP cytometry consists of thousands of Western blots performed on a microscope slide-sized gel microwell array for single cells. Thus, EP cytometry images pose an analysis challenge that blends requirements for accurate and reproducible analysis encountered for both standard Western blots and protein microarrays. Here, we introduce the Summit algorithm to automate array segmentation, peak background subtraction, and Gaussian fitting for EP cytometry. The data structure storage of parameters allows users to perform quality control on identically processed data, yielding a ~6.5% difference in coefficient of quartile variation (CQV) of protein peak area under the curve (AUC) distributions measured by four users. Further, inspired by investigations of background subtraction methods to reduce technical variation in protein microarray measurements, we aimed to understand the trade-offs between EP cytometry analysis throughput and variation. We found an 11%–50% increase in protein peaks that passed quality control with a subtraction method similar to microarray “average on-boundary” versus an axial subtraction method. The background subtraction method only mildly influences AUC CQV, which varies between 1% and 4.5%. Finally, we determined that the narrow confidence interval for peak location and peak width parameters from Gaussian fitting yield minimal uncertainty in protein sizing. The AUC CQV differed by only ~1%–2% when summed over the peak width bounds versus the 95% peak width confidence interval. We expect Summit to be broadly applicable to other arrayed EP separations, or traditional Western blot analysis.