A plasmon waveguide resonance (PWR) sensor is designed, fabricated, and tested for self-referenced biosensing. The PWR sensor is able to support two different polarizations, TM and TE. The TM polarization has a large sensitivity to variations in the background refractive index while the TE polarization is more sensitive to the surface properties. The ability of the PWR sensor to simultaneously ...

A study of the DUPIC (Direct Use of Spent PWR Fuel In CANDU) cycle was made to analyze cycle performance relative to that of PWR and CANDU fuel cycles in terms of uranium utilization and spent fuel production efficiency. The DUPIC cycle was found to be most efficient in terms of minimizing spent fuel production as well as most efficient (within limits) in terms of maximizing natural uranium uti...

In this paper, the noninvasive and real-time plasmon waveguide resonance (PWR) thermometry is reported theoretically and demonstrated experimentally. Owing to the enhanced evanescent field and thermal shield effect of its dielectric layer, a PWR thermometer permits accurate temperature sensing and has a wide dynamic range. A temperature measurement sensitivity of 9.4 × 10(-3) °C is achieved and...

BACKGROUND Accurate tools for assessing household wealth are essential for many health studies in developing countries. Household survey and participatory wealth ranking (PWR) are two approaches to generate data for this purpose. METHODS A household survey and PWR were conducted among eight villages in rural South Africa. We developed three indicators of household wealth using the data. One i...

Two spatially-explicit estimates of gross primary production (GPP) are available for the Northern Great Plains. An empirical piecewise regression (PWR) GPP model was developed from flux tower measurements to map carbon flux across the region. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) GPP model is a process-based model that uses flux tower data to calibrate its parameters. Verificatio...

Geological mapping of the area around Baltis Vallis, the longest (6,800 km) canali-type channel on Venus, has led to the determination of stratigraphic relations which appear to be consistent over this entire region comprising -20 x 106 km 2 or -5% of the total surface of Venus. The most abundant unit in the study area, plains with wrinkle ridges (Pwr), consists of two subunits separated by the...

Periodization is the most effective approach to resistance training; however, optimal cycle lengths for older persons are not known. This study examined the durations of performance increments, plateaus, and decrements in women, ages 61-75 yr, over 9 wk of isokinetic training. After a 2-wk adaptation cycle, older women trained for either power (PWR; 4.73 rad/s; n = 9) or strength (STR; 1.05 rad...

Termination of the stem cells in the floral meristem (also known as floral determinacy) is critical for the reproductive success of plants, and the molecular activities regulating floral determinacy are precisely orchestrated during the course of floral development. In Arabidopsis thaliana, regulators of floral determinacy include several transcription factor genes, such as APETALA2 (AP2), AGAM...

Although there have been some severe nuclear accidents such as Three Mile Island (USA), Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan), nuclear fission energy is still a source of clean energy that can substitute for fossil fuels in a centralized way and in a great amount with commercial availability and economic competitiveness. Since the pressurized water reactor (PWR) is the most widely used nucl...

BACKGROUND Left ventricular contractility in atrial fibrillation is known to change in a beat to beat fashion, but there is no gold standard for contractility indices in atrial fibrillation, especially those measured non-invasively. OBJECTIVE To determine whether the non-invasive index of contractility "preload-adjusted PWR(max)" (maximal ventricular power divided by the square of end diastol...