bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Doctrinal Doubleness and the Meaning of Despair in William Perkins’s “Table” and Nathaniel Woodes’s The Conflict of Conscience
Authors: Sullivan Erin
Published: July 2013

This article explores the “double vision” of experience produced by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century predestinarian thinking, focusing in particular on the vexed question of despair and its significance within the Protestant spiritual journey. Through an analysis of two under-examined and seemingly very different Elizabethan texts—the theologian William Perkins’s “Table Declaring the Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation” and the rector Nathaniel Woodes’s play, The Conflict of Conscience — the article reveals the extent to which the doctrinal complexities embedded within the Church of England’s predestinarian theology became bound up in the problem of narrative storytelling, with writers looking for recognizable causality and sequentiality in the unfolding of the spiritual life even as the underpinning belief system refuted it. The eventual result of this paradox, this article argues, was the total embrace of active, even aggressive personal interpretation as a means for understanding and clarifying the double vision of despair, engaging with its dramatic plurality while also striving to bring it to a unified and focused conclusion.
Robert Tofte’s Of Mariage and Wiuing and the Bishops’ Ban of 1599
Authors: Keener Andrew S.
Published: July 2013

This essay emphasizes the contemporary, Italian origin of Robert Tofte’s Of Mariage and Wiuing as an important and unacknowledged reason for its English censure. On June 1, 1599, the bishops John Whitgift and Richard Bancroft signed an order to burn nine books, one of which was Tofte’s translation of the Italian Dell’ammogliarsi . This book, “done into English” as Of Mariage and Wiuing , presents two opposing treatises on marriage by Ercole Tasso and his more famous cousin, the late poet Torquato. While Ercole’s declamation features some misogynistic language comparable to that in the other censored books, several factors including typography, content, and genre distinguish Of Mariage and Wiuing as somewhat of an exception. Nevertheless, if Tofte’s translation was somehow less objectionable, its Italian provenance counted against it. John Wolfe’s publication of Pietro Aretino’s scandalous dialogues in the 1580s and the reverberations of “Aretine” elements in the work of Thomas Nashe and John Marston in the 1590s fully prepared the bishops to condemn “an excellent, pleasant, and Philosophicall Controuersie” from Italy, a land commonly characterized in England by deviant religious, social, and sexual behavior.
“Betuix pyne and faith”: The Poetics of Compassion in Walter Kennedy’s Passioun of Crist
Authors: Goldstein R. James
Published: July 2013

Walter Kennedy’s Passioun of Crist , the only surviving vernacular work in the tradition of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditations of the Life of Christ to be composed in rhyme royal stanzas, is a more significant artistic achievement in the history of Middle Scots poetry and of late medieval devotional writing than has been previously recognized. Combining historicist and formalist methods of analysis, the article describes in detail the cultural locations of the text. The carefully crafted poem reveals a remarkable cooperation between specific material practices of medieval affective devotion and a high courtly mode of medieval literary aesthetics.
Fancy, Dreams, and Paradise: Miltonic and Baconian Garden Imagery in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan
Authors: Raiger Michael
Published: July 2013

This article challenges conventional readings of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan that interpret the poem as presenting an ideal model of poetic creativity. In locating the intertextual web of references that point to Milton’s Paradise Lost and various texts by Francis Bacon, the garden imagery of the poem, which has been so resistant to critical interpretation, can be read in the context of a rejection of Coleridge’s own empirically grounded theory of inspiration expressed in his 1796 volume of poems. A Coleridgean theory of dreams is presented as a framework by which the prose Preface to Kubla Khan can be shown to reveal the poet’s criticism of the dream-language by which the poem was purportedly constructed. The Preface affixed to the 1816 version of Kubla Khan will be subject to critical reassessment, in order to understand the circumstances surrounding its publication history. The major contention of this article is that Kubla Khan is a revision and rejection of Fancy, the poetic form of inspiration, material in its operations, and conceived as the agency by which Coleridge’s early poetry was produced.
Finding the Forms of Cleanness
Authors: Bahr Arthur
Published: July 2013

The Middle English poem Cleanness is regularly marked off into four-line units in its sole surviving manuscript, British Library Cotton Nero A.x, and I argue that reading Cleanness with attention to these divisions helps the poem emerge as a more complex piece of verbal and homiletic art. By suggesting reading strategies for the lines that they mark off, the stanza marks evoke the interpenetration of the visual and the verbal that the poem proposes more broadly. The author’s words and the scribe’s activity thus combine to shape the poem’s interpretive potential. The crucial issue is therefore not whether Cleanness was intended by its author to be written or read in stanzas, but rather the fact that the poem’s uniquely surviving physical form encourages us to consider whether it is so, and what that might mean for our engagement with its content—how we should go about finding, in short, the literary, codicological, and homiletic forms of Cleanness .
The Scriblerian Mock-Arts: Pseudo-Technical Satire in Swift and His Contemporaries
Authors: Bullard Paddy
Published: July 2013

During the first three decades of the eighteenth century, Jonathan Swift and members of his circle—which included Alexander Pope, John Gay, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Sheridan—wrote a series of satires on the technical prose of the day, referred to in this article as the “Scriblerian mock-arts.” These included Swift’s “Mechanical Operation of the Spirit,” Pope’s “Art of Sinking in Poetry,” Gay’s Trivia , and Arbuthnot’s Art of Political Lying . They appeared at a time of innovation in the genres of British literature: the rise of the novel, the publication of the first Enlightenment encyclopedias, and the triumph of the daily essay-journal were already well underway. The Scriblerian mock-arts are significant because they belong in a small way to that revolution in mediation, and they are designed as a commentary upon it as well. This article describes the conventions of this neglected sub-genre. It shows how the Scriblerian satirists used it to argue the absurdity of trying to specify in print certain forms of tacit or personal knowledge.

I forget whether Advice be among the lost

Things which, Ariosto says, are to be found in

the Moon: That and Time ought to have been

there.

—Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1711)
Apostrophe, Devotion, and Anti-Semitism: Rhetorical Community in the Prioress’s Prologue and Tale
Authors: Fenn Jessica
Published: July 2013

In the Prioress’s Prologue and Tale , apostrophes appear as shared sayings, or short, formulaic phrases often repeated in written and oral contexts. The Prioress’s use of apostrophes to praise and blame resonates with widespread rhetorical understandings of this type of shared saying in late medieval England, as well as common uses of it. This shared rhetorical understanding saw apostrophes as a way to stir kindred feelings for or against an absent other in speakers and their listeners; in the Prioress’s Prologue and Tale , loving prayers to divine figures take the form of apostrophes and so do hostile addresses to Jews. In this way, the pairing of devotion and anti-Semitism in the Prioress’s speech appears as part of a wider rhetorical pattern in late medieval England and locates her and the chorister in her tale as part of a rhetorical community that shared these understandings. In depicting the spread of shared sayings beyond the walls of religious houses and universities and into articulation by less literate people, such as lay choristers, the tale imagines the potentially violent effects both of such speeches themselves and of the rhetorical communities that took shape around them.
Jacobean Foreign Policy, London’s Civic Polity, and John Squire’s Lord Mayor’s Show, The Tryumphs of Peace (1620)
Authors: Finlayson J. Caitlin
Published: July 2013

John Squire’s London Lord Mayor’s show has generally been undervalued as a largely typical example of the genre, formulaic in its deployment of traditional themes, characters, and devices. This article argues that Squire’s The Tryumphs of Peace is in actuality radically different from the typical pattern of Lord Mayor’s shows in directly commenting on an immediate, national political crisis. It is not just a traditional paean to the livery companies’ good government of London, but instead lauds James I’s role as peacemaker in both internal and external politics, using James’s image as a peace-maker as its central focus (and a material pageant device). This is not simply a tribute; rather it has immediate, pressing political significance in 1620 because of the imminent possibility that England might become engaged in the existing religious and dynastic struggles of the Netherlands and parts of the German states during the Thirty Years’ War. The Tryumphs of Peace presents the voice of an influential movement in the merchant class to urge James to continue in his role as peacemaker by avoiding direct conflict, and it presents a counterpoint to support for intervention at the royal court and among members of Parliament.
God’s Gluttons: Middle English Devotional Texts, Interiority, and Indulgence
Authors: Brandolino Gina
Published: July 2013

This article offers an analysis of the complex and contradictory nature of lay religious texts produced in England at the turn of the fifteenth century. These works are interesting because they include statements of both encouragement to and anxiety about lay Christians who pursue more singular forms of devotion. I focus on one text in particular, A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Which Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven , a monastic treatise on contemplation translated into Middle English and adapted for a lay audience in the late fourteenth century, as a touchstone to consider these conflicting positions.

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low

level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, expressed

in medieval language: the union with God.
—Carl Jung, in a letter written in 1961 to Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous
Disappearing Act: The Role of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra
Authors: Read David
Published: July 2013

This essay explores perhaps the most unusual death scene in all of Shakespeare’s plays: that of Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra , in which Enobarbus wills himself to die in the absence of any obvious physical cause. Readers have traditionally viewed this death scene as “Roman” in character, but I argue that Enobarbus’s demise aligns symbolically with Cleopatra’s as an instance of an easy death, and moreover a death that (following Stanley Cavell’s broad argument about Shakespearean tragedy) enables the character to avoid the full weight of the catastrophe that conventionally occurs at the end of a tragic drama. Shakespeare’s treatment of Enobarbus and Cleopatra offers interesting resonances with other late plays that have tragic elements but fit uneasily into any single genre.
“There are so many things of which an editor is required to think”: Multiplicity and Value in Anthony Trollope’s “An Editor’s Tales”
Authors: Simmons Emily
Published: July 2013

The editor was not a well-established figure in the mid-Victorian period. Anthony Trollope’s series of short stories “An Editor’s Tales” (1869-70) offer commentary on the multiple roles and responsibilities of the editor. This essay argues that when examined in relation to their original periodical context, “An Editor’s Tales” offers a sharp critique of contemporary publication practices and asserts a more complex picture of the editorial role than is presented elsewhere in Trollope’s work.
Marketing Celebrity: Norman Macleod, Dinah Mulock Craik, and John Everett Millais in Alexander Strahan’s Good Words
Authors: Delafield Catherine
Published: July 2013

This essay considers how the celebrity identities of an author, editor, and illustrator were deployed in a successful religious periodical. The publisher, Alexander Strahan, sought to differentiate his product from others in the magazine market; however, Good Words shared motifs and names with other periodicals, including Cornhill Magazine . Strahan also reframed the work of participating contributors at the end of 1862, combining established celebrity names to configure a volume of the periodical that commemorated the first anniversary of the death of Prince Albert.
Winston Churchill, the Morning Post , and the End of the Imperial Romance
Authors: Griffiths Andrew
Published: July 2013

Winston Churchill’s Morning Post correspondence from Kitchener’s 1898 Sudan expedition documents a shift in the practice and reportage of imperialism. Sensational New Journalism and aggressive New Imperialism had been locked in a mutually-supportive relationship. Special correspondents, including Churchill, emphasised the romance of empire. However, Churchill also looked forward with trepidation to a time when “there will be no more of these nice little expeditions . . . no more peerages for the generals, no more copy for the journalists.” Kitchener’s application of military technology produced a combination of tedium and horror which challenged correspondents. Churchill’s Sudan correspondence records the end of Britain’s imperial romance.
“I’m really going to kill him this time”: Olive Schreiner, W. T. Stead, and the Politics of Publicity in the Review of Reviews
Authors: Gill Clare
Published: July 2013

W. T. Stead’s popular six-penny periodical, the Review of Reviews , fully embraced the cult of personality of the New Journalism of the late nineteenth century. Through an analysis of the periodical’s innovative use of both text and image, this article will explore Stead’s representation of one of the key personalities of his flagship publication: the South African writer Olive Schreiner. For Stead, the enigmatic yet divisive New Journalist, Schreiner, the celebrated yet contentious New Woman, fully embodied the spirit of his publication. By tracing their relationship through the channels of both private letters and public discourse, this article provides insight into the level of collaboration that existed between newspaper editors and the artists they chose to feature in their publications, and points to the dialogic and often performative nature of the relationship between writers and editors in fin de siècle periodicals.
The Critical Work of the Notices Column: Remaking the Contemporary Review after 1877
Authors: Malone Katherine
Published: July 2013

This article examines how “Essays and Notices” and subsequent notices columns redefined the Contemporary Review after its highly publicized identity crisis in 1877. Although the column was initially used to counter bad press and reassert the journal’s identity, it set the stage for an inquiry into critical authority that would profoundly alter the Contemporary ’s open platform and influence its later attitudes toward fiction and readers. Using the Contemporary ’s notices as a case study, the article also draws attention to notices as an understudied genre within nineteenth-century periodicals.
Depth-Resolved Multilayer Pigment Identification in Paintings: Combined Use of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)
Authors: Kaszewska Ewa A. , Sylwestrzak Marcin , Marczak Jan , Skrzeczanowski Wojciech , Iwanicka Magdalena , Szmit-Naud Elżbieta , Anglos Demetrios , Targowski Piotr
Published: July 2013

A detailed feasibility study on the combined use of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy with optical coherence tomography (LIBS/OCT), aiming at a realistic depth-resolved elemental analysis of multilayer stratigraphies in paintings, is presented. Merging a high spectral resolution LIBS system with a high spatial resolution spectral OCT instrument significantly enhances the quality and accuracy of stratigraphic analysis. First, OCT mapping is employed prior to LIBS analysis in order to assist the selection of specific areas of interest on the painting surface to be examined in detail. Then, intertwined with LIBS, the OCT instrument is used as a precise profilometer for the online determination of the depth of the ablation crater formed by individual laser pulses during LIBS depth-profile analysis. This approach is novel and enables (i) the precise in-depth scaling of elemental concentration profiles, and (ii) the recognition of layer boundaries by estimating the corresponding differences in material ablation rate. Additionally, the latter is supported, within the transparency of the object, by analysis of the OCT cross-sectional views. The potential of this method is illustrated by presenting results on the detailed analysis of the structure of an historic painting on canvas performed to aid planned restoration of the artwork.
Optimizing Savitzky–Golay Parameters for Improving Spectral Resolution and Quantification in Infrared Spectroscopy
Authors: Zimmermann Boris , Kohler Achim
Published: July 2013

Calculating derivatives of spectral data by the Savitzky–Golay (SG) numerical algorithm is often used as a preliminary preprocessing step to resolve overlapping signals, enhance signal properties, and suppress unwanted spectral features that arise due to nonideal instrument and sample properties. Addressing these issues, a study of the simulated and measured infrared data by partial least-squares regression has been conducted. The simulated data sets were modeled by considering a range of undesired chemical and physical spectral anomalies and variations that can occur in a measured spectrum, such as baseline variations, noise, and scattering effects. The study has demonstrated the importance of the optimization of the SG parameters during the conversion of spectra into derivative form, specifically window size and polynomial order of the fitting curve. A specific optimal window size is associated with an exact component of the system being estimated, and this window size does not necessarily apply for some other component present in the system. Since the optimization procedure can be time-consuming, as a rough guideline spectral noise level can be used for assessment of window size. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that, when the extended multiplicative signal correction (EMSC) is used alongside the SG procedure, the derivative treatment of data by the SG algorithm must precede the EMSC normalization.
In Situ Diffuse Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (DRIFTS) Study of Formaldehyde Adsorption and Reactions on Pd-Doped Nano–γ-Fe2O3 Films
Authors: Huang Kaijin , Kong Lingcong , Yuan Fangli , Xie Changsheng
Published: July 2013

Palladium-doped nano–γ-Fe2O3 films were printed on Al2O3 substrates by screen printing–injecting hybrid technology. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy techniques were used to characterize the phase structures and morphologies of the films, respectively. The sensitivity of the films to 100 ppm formaldehyde in air was investigated. The surface adsorption and reaction process between Pd-doped nano–γ-Fe2O3 films and formaldehyde was studied by in situ diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (DRIFTS) at different temperatures. Dioxymethylene, formate ions, polyoxymethylene, and adsorbed formaldehyde were detected when the Pd-doped nano–γ-Fe2O3 films were exposed to 100 ppm formaldehyde at different temperatures. A possible mechanism of the reaction process is discussed.
Automated Quantitative Spectroscopic Analysis Combining Background Subtraction, Cosmic Ray Removal, and Peak Fitting
Authors: James Timothy M. , Schlösser Magnus , Lewis Richard J. , Fischer Sebastian , Bornschein Beate , Telle Helmut H.
Published: July 2013

An integrated concept for post-acquisition spectrum analysis was developed for in-line (real-time) and off-line applications that preserves absolute spectral quantification; after the initializing parameter setup, only minimal user intervention is required. This spectral evaluation suite is composed of a sequence of tasks specifically addressing cosmic ray removal, background subtraction, and peak analysis and fitting, together with the treatment of two-dimensional charge-coupled device array data. One may use any of the individual steps on their own, or may exclude steps from the chain if so desired. For the background treatment, the canonical rolling-circle filter (RCF) algorithm was adopted, but it was coupled with a Savitzky–Golay filtering step on the locus-array generated from a single RCF pass. This novel only-two-parameter procedure vastly improves on the RCF's deficiency to overestimate the baseline level in spectra with broad peak features. The peak analysis routine developed here is an only-two-parameter (amplitude and position) fitting algorithm that relies on numerical line shape profiles rather than on analytical functions. The overall analysis chain was programmed in National Instrument's LabVIEW; this software allows for easy incorporation of this spectrum analysis suite into any LabVIEW-managed instrument control, data-acquisition environment, or both. The strength of the individual tasks and the integrated program sequence are demonstrated for the analysis of a wide range of (although not necessarily limited to) Raman spectra of varying complexity and exhibiting nonanalytical line profiles. In comparison to other analysis algorithms and functions, our new approach for background subtraction, peak analysis, and fitting returned vastly improved quantitative results, even for “hidden” details in the spectra, in particular, for nonanalytical line profiles. All software is available for download.
Quantitative Determination of Methanol and Ethanol with Synthetic Calibration Spectra in Passive Fourier Transform Infrared Remote Sensing Measurements
Authors: Guo Qiaohan , Small Gary W.
Published: July 2013

A spectral synthesis strategy is introduced to help obtain estimates of path-integrated concentrations in passive Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) remote sensing measurements conducted during field-monitoring experiments. Obtaining quantitative information from passive infrared data is challenging because of the joint effects of temperature and concentration on spectral intensities. The collection of calibration data for use in modeling spectral intensities for a given set of experimental conditions is also costly and labor intensive. In the work presented here, a radiance model is defined for use in synthesizing calibration spectra that serve as inputs to partial least-squares (PLS) models that relate spectral intensities to path-integrated concentrations. The field data for which quantitative estimates are desired are used to estimate the background temperature associated with a given time and set of experimental conditions. Sample temperatures can be obtained through either experimental measurement or by estimating one calibration release. Given these temperatures, calibration data can be synthesized and the PLS model developed. This methodology is tested with stack monitoring data obtained from controlled releases of pure and mixture samples of heated ethanol and methanol. Experiments were conducted across 6 days with stack temperatures of 150 to 200 °C and with path-integrated concentrations in the range of 10 to 300 parts per million meters. Median relative errors in the estimates of path-integrated concentration were typically in the range of 20% or less, with the best results observed at the higher stack temperatures.
Sequentially Shifted Excitation Raman Spectroscopy: Novel Algorithm and Instrumentation for Fluorescence-Free Raman Spectroscopy in Spectral Space
Authors: Cooper John B. , Abdelkader Mohamed , Wise Kent L.
Published: July 2013

A novel Raman spectrometer is presented in a handheld format. The spectrometer utilizes a temperature-controlled, distributed Bragg reflector diode laser, which allows the instrument to operate in a sequentially shifted excitation mode to eliminate fluorescence backgrounds, fixed pattern noise, and room lights, while keeping the Raman data in true spectral space. The cost-efficient design of the instrument allows rapid acquisition of shifted excitation data with a shift time penalty of less than 2 s. The Raman data are extracted from the shifted excitation spectra using a novel algorithm that is typically three orders of magnitude faster than conventional shifted-excitation algorithms operating in spectral space. The superiority of the instrument and algorithm in terms of background removal and signal-to-noise ratio is demonstrated by comparison to FT-Raman, standard deviation spectra, shifted excitation Raman difference spectroscopy (SERDS), and conventional multiple-shift excitation methods.
In Situ Attenuated Total Reflectance Fourier Transform Infrared (ATR FT-IR) Spectroscopy Monitoring of 1,2-Butylene Oxide Polymerization Reaction by Using Iterative Concentration-Guided Classical Least Squares
Authors: Chen Xiaoyun , Pell Randy , Sarsani Sagar , Cramm Brian , Villa Carlos , Dixit Ravindra
Published: July 2013

There has been rapid growth in the application of in situ optical spectroscopy techniques for reaction and process monitoring recently in both academia and industry. Vibrational spectroscopies such as mid-infrared, near-infrared spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy have proven to be versatile and informative. Accurate determination of concentrations, based on highly overlapped spectra, remains a challenge. As an example, 1,2-butylene oxide (BO) polymerization, an important industrial reaction, initiated by propylene glycol (PG) and catalyzed by KOH, is studied in this work in a semi-batch fashion by using in situ attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR) monitoring. The weak BO absorbance, the constantly changing interference from the product oligomers throughout the course of the reaction, and the change in BO spectral features with system polarity posed challenges for quantitative spectral analysis based on conventional methods. An iterative concentration-guided classical least-squares (ICG-CLS) method was developed to overcome these challenges. Taking advantage of the concentration-domain information, ICG-CLS enabled the estimation of the pure oligomer product spectra at different stages of the semi-batch process, which in turn was used to construct valid CLS models. The ICG-CLS algorithm provides an in situ calibration method that can be broadly applied to reactions of known order. Caveats in its applications are also discussed.
Characterization of Novel Lithium Battery Cathode Materials by Spectroscopic Methods: The Li5+xFeO4 System
Authors: Maroni Victor A. , Johnson Christopher S. , Rood Shawn C.M. , Kropf A. Jeremy , Bass Dean A.
Published: July 2013

The novel, lithium-rich oxide-phase Li5FeO4 (LFO) could, in theory, deliver a specific capacity >900 mAh/g when deployed as a cathode or cathode precursor in a battery with a lithium-based anode. However, research results to date on LFO indicate that less than one of the five Li+ cations can be reversibly de-intercalated/re-intercalated during repetitive charging and discharging cycles. In the present research, the system Li5+ xFeO4 with x values in the range of 0.0–2.0 was investigated by a combination of Raman and X-ray absorption spectroscopic methods supported by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis in order to determine if the Li5FeO4 lattice would accommodate additional Li+ ions, with concomitant lowering of the valence on the FeIII cations. Both the Raman phonon spectra and the XRD patterns were invariant for all values of x, strongly indicating that additional Li+ did not enter the Li5FeO4 lattice. Also, Raman spectral results and high-resolution synchrotron XRD data revealed the presence of second-phase Li2O in all samples with x greater than 0.0. Synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy at the Fe kα edge performed on the sample with a Li–Fe ratio of 7.0 (i.e., x = 2.0) showed no evidence for the presence of FeII. This resistance to accepting more lithium into the Li5FeO4 structure is attributed to the exceedingly stable nature of high-spin FeIII in tetrahedral “FeIIIO4” structural units of Li5FeO4. Partial substitution of the FeIII with other cations could provide a path toward increasing the reversible Li+ content of Li5 xFeO4-type phases.
Human Hair in the Identification of Cocaine Abuse with Cantilever-Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy and Principal Component Analysis
Authors: Lehtinen Jaakko , Hirschmann Christian Bernd , Keiski Riitta Liisa , Kuusela Tom
Published: July 2013

In this study, a novel approach combining different techniques, including Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) with an interferometric cantilever microphone, and principal component analysis (PCA) along with a proper data preprocessing procedure, have been used in the investigation of hair samples for cocaine abuse. Hair fibers from cocaine-overdose patients have been measured using a simple procedure involving cantilever-enhanced photoacoustic Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. In addition, a reference group of hair samples from subjects with no cocaine abuse has been measured. We present a first approach to discriminate the cocaine users from the reference group with the photoacoustic method and PCA. With proper data preprocessing methods, the two groups were successfully separated according to their spectra. The results were confirmed with two different classification methods independent of the principal component data analysis.
An Important Improvement in Ferron-Timed Spectrophotometry
Authors: Zhang Jing , Chang Fang , Ren Yijin , Shi Qiuyi
Published: July 2013

Ferron dosage ([Ferron]) is key to ferron-timed spectrophotometry (ferron assay). In order to clarify some important questions, the following studies were conducted: (1) The effect of [Ferron] on the sensitivity of total aluminum (AlT) determination was experimentally investigated and 27Al nuclear magnetic resonance (27Al NMR) spectroscopy was used to verify our developed Ferron assay; (2) the chemical equilibrium calculation was employed to analyze the effect of [Ferron] on the determination of AlT; and (3) the main reason for insufficient [Ferron] was further analyzed. This is the first study to standardize a ferron assay operating procedure.
Quantitative Analysis of Sodium Carbonate and Sodium Bicarbonate in Solid Mixtures Using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR)
Authors: Joshi Shailesh , Kalyanasundaram Sivasubramanian , Balasubramanian Venkatraman
Published: July 2013

An analytical methodology is proposed based on constant ratio and absorbance correction methods to quantify sodium carbonate, Na2CO3 (1450 cm−1), and sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3 (1000 cm−1, 1923 cm−1), in solid mixtures using Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Potassium ferricyanide, K3Fe(CN)6 (2117cm−1), was used as an internal standard to get characteristic parameters. NaHCO3 was quantified using the constant ratio method. Spectral interference of NaHCO3 in Na2CO3 (1450 cm−1) was corrected using the absorbance correction method. The corrected absorbance was successfully applied to quantify Na2CO3 (1450 cm−1) in the mixture using the constant ratio method. The results obtained for simulated samples were satisfactory (relative standard deviation less than 7%) for all samples.
Diagnostic of Laser-Induced Plasma Using Abel Inversion and Radiation Modeling
Authors: Merk Sven , Demidov Alexander , Shelby Daniel , Gornushkin Igor B. , Panne Ulrich , Smith Ben W. , Omenetto Nicoló
Published: July 2013

A method based on matching synthetic and experimental emissivity spectra was applied to spatially resolved measurements of a laser-induced plasma ignited in argon at atmospheric pressure. The experimental emissivity spectra were obtained by Abel inversion of intensity spectra measured from a thin plasma slice perpendicular to the plasma axis. The synthetic spectra were iteratively calculated from an equilibrium model of plasma radiation that included free–free, free–bound, and bound–bound transitions. From both the experimental and synthetic emissivity spectra, spatial and temporal distributions of plasma temperature and number densities of plasma species (atoms, ions, and electrons) were obtained and compared. For the best-fit synthetic spectra, the temperature and number densities were read directly from the model; for experimental spectra, these parameters were obtained by traditional Boltzmann plot and Stark broadening methods. In both cases, the same spectroscopic data were used. Two approaches revealed a close agreement in electron number densities, but differences in plasma excitation temperatures and atom number densities. The trueness of the two methods was tested by the direct Abel transform that reconstructed the original intensity spectra for comparing them to the measured spectra. The comparison yielded a 9 and 13% difference between the reconstructed and experimental spectra for the numerical and traditional methods, respectively. It was thus demonstrated that the spectral fit method is capable of providing more accurate plasma diagnostics than the Boltzmann plot and Stark broadening methods.
Evaluation of Local Approaches to Obtain Accurate Near-Infrared (NIR) Equations for Prediction of Ingredient Composition of Compound Feeds
Authors: Fernández-Ahumada Elvira , Fearn Tom , Gómez-Cabrera Augusto , Guerrero-Ginel José Emilio , Pérez-Marín Dolores C. , Garrido-Varo Ana
Published: July 2013

This research work investigated new methods to improve the accuracy of intact feed calibrations for the near-infrared (NIR) prediction of the ingredient composition. When NIR reflection spectroscopy, together with linear models, was used for the prediction of the ingredient composition, the results were not always acceptable. Therefore, other methods have been investigated. Three different local methods (comparison analysis using restructured near-infrared and constituent data [CARNAC]), locally weighed regression [LWR], and LOCAL) were applied to a large ( N = 20 320) and heterogeneous population of non-milled feed compounds for the NIR prediction of the inclusion percentage of wheat and sunflower meal, as representative of two different classes of ingredients. Compared with partial least-squares regression, results showed considerable reductions of standard error of prediction values for all methods and ingredients: reductions of 59, 47, and 50% with CARNAC, LWR, and LOCAL, respectively, for wheat, and reductions of 49, 45, and 43% with CARNAC, LWR, and LOCAL, respectively, for sunflower meal. These results are a valuable achievement in coping with legislation and manufacture requirements concerning the labeling of intact feedstuffs.
High-Throughput, High-Resolution Echelle Deep-UV Raman Spectrometer
Authors: Bykov Sergei V. , Sharma Bhavya , Asher Sanford A.
Published: July 2013

We constructed an ultrahigh-throughput, high-resolution ultraviolet (UV) Raman spectrograph that utilizes a high-efficiency filter-stage monochromator and a high-dispersion Echelle spectrograph. The spectrograph utilizes a total of six mirrors and two gratings, with an overall efficiency at 229 nm of ∼18%. The limiting resolution of our spectrometer is 0.6 cm−1 full width half-maximum (FWHM), as measured for 229 nm Rayleigh scattering. Use of a 1 mm–wide entrance slit gives rise to an approximately 10 cm−1 FWHM resolution at 229 nm. The ultrahigh spectrograph throughput enables ultrahigh signal-to-noise ratio, deep UV Raman spectra that allow us to monitor <1% changes in peptide bond composition. The throughput is measured to be 35-fold greater than conventional deep UV Raman spectrometers.
Methods and Applications of Raman Microspectroscopy to Single-Cell Analysis
Authors: Schie Iwan W. , Huser Thomas
Published: July 2013

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful biochemical analysis technique that allows for the dynamic characterization and imaging of living biological cells in the absence of fluorescent stains. In this review, we summarize some of the most recent developments in the noninvasive biochemical characterization of single cells by spontaneous Raman scattering. Different instrumentation strategies utilizing confocal detection optics, multispot, and line illumination have been developed to improve the speed and sensitivity of the analysis of single cells by Raman spectroscopy. To analyze and visualize the large data sets obtained during such experiments, sophisticated multivariate statistical analysis tools are necessary to reduce the data and extract components of interest. We highlight the most recent applications of single cell analysis by Raman spectroscopy and their biomedical implications that have enabled the noninvasive characterization of specific metabolic states of eukaryotic cells, the identification and characterization of stem cells, and the rapid identification of bacterial cells. We conclude the article with a brief look into the future of this rapidly evolving research area.
Host–Guest Molecular Interactions in Vanillin/Amylose Inclusion Complexes
Authors: Rodríguez Silvio D. , Bernik Delia L.
Published: July 2013

The interaction of 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde (vanillin) and Hylon VII due to the formation of an inclusion complex is studied using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and circular dichroism (CD). The results confirm the close interaction among the different functional groups of vanillin and its host. In addition, a second case study was carried out with an amylose from a different source (100% amylose [APT III]). As a result, remarkable differences were found in the vanillin complexation capability of this amylose, which is only shown in solution by circular dichroism spectroscopy studies through a clear Cotton effect. This finding confirms the value of using CD studies, which shows that, depending on the amylose source, inclusion complexes can be found in solution, or both in solution and the coexisting precipitates, as shown using other techniques, such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) or differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Moreover, solubility assays and complexation of both starches with iodine and subsequent absorption spectroscopy studies gives more information regarding the possible source of the starch encapsulation capability. Thus, Hylon VII shows higher capacity as vanillin encapsulant than APT III, showing the formation of inclusion complexes both in solution and solid phase, whereas APT III complexes are only perceivable in solution.
Investigation of the Photoionization Properties of Pharmaceutically Relevant Substances by Resonance-Enhanced Multiphoton Ionization Spectroscopy and Single-Photon Ionization Spectroscopy Using Synchrotron Radiation
Authors: Kleeblatt Juliane , Ehlert Sven , Hölzer Jasper , Sklorz Martin , Rittgen Jan , Baumgärtel Peter , Schubert Jochen K. , Zimmermann Ralf
Published: July 2013

The photoionization properties of the pharmaceutically relevant substances amantadine, diazepam, dimethyltryptamine, etomidate, ketamine, mescaline, methadone, and propofol were determined. At beamline U125/2-10m-NIM of the BESSY II synchrotron facility (Berlin, Germany) vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photoionization spectra were recorded in the energy range 7.1 to 11.9 eV (174.6 to 104.2 nm), showing the hitherto unknown ionization energies and fragmentation appearance energies of the compounds under investigation. Furthermore, (1+1)-resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) spectra of selected compounds (amantadine, diazepam, etomidate, ketamine, and propofol) were recorded by a continuous scan in the energy range between 3.6 and 5.7 eV (345 to 218 nm) using a tunable optical parametric oscillator (spectral resolution: 0.1 nm) laser system. The resulting REMPI wavelength spectra of these compounds are discussed and put into context with already known UVabsorption data. Time-of-flight mass spectrometry was used for ion detection in both experiments. Finally, the implications of the obtained physical-chemical results for potential analytical applications are discussed. In this context, fast detection approaches for the considered compounds from breath gas using photoionization mass spectrometry and a rapid pre-concentration step (e.g., needle trap device) are of interest.
Sensitivity-Enhanced Transmission Raman Spectroscopy
Authors: Pelletier Michael J.
Published: July 2013

Transmission Raman sensitivity for a representative commercial pharmaceutical tablet was increased by a factor of 40 using optics that returned lost laser and Raman photons to the tablet surface. A new achromatic one-way mirror is introduced that uses the spatial coherence of laser light to nondestructively force laser photons through the reflective tablet coating. Transmission Raman mapping and spatially offset Raman spectroscopy (SORS) mapping were developed and used to better understand the sensitivity-enhancement technology. Fundamental limitations of the sensitivity-enhancement approach are described and used to guide the design of the optics. The sensitivity-enhancement optics are compatible with commercial transmission Raman instruments.
The Limited Editions Club’s Leaves of Grass (1942) and the American imagetext
Authors: Weiss Francine
Published: July 2013

In 1941 photographer Edward Weston travelled around the United States photographing images for a luxury reprint edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to be published by the Limited Editions Club under the direction of George Macy. A case study in the fundamental challenges of combining photographs and poetry, this article discusses Weston and Macy’s disagreements over the issue of ‘illustration’ and the shortcomings of an illustrative approach to photography, and discusses one of the more successful combinations of images and texts in the final published volumes. Although these final volumes occupy an uncertain place within the American photo-book genre of the 1930s and 1940s due to the lack of consistently close or dynamic interactions of texts and images, as a project by one of America’s acclaimed modernist photographers for a canonical American text, the Limited Editions Club’s Leaves of Grass is an important book in the history of the American photo book or image-text that represents some of the essential challenges in combining photography and poetry.
Surrealist histories of language, image, media: Donald Barthelme’s ‘collage stories’
Authors: Sierra Nicole
Published: July 2013

Using previously neglected archival materials from the Donald Barthelme Literary Papers at the University of Houston Libraries, my article identifies the sources of Donald Barthelme’s collages and their allusive meanings. In doing so, the author’s under-appreciated relationship with artistic collage techniques is further elucidated, revealing how indebted his work is to the innovations of surrealist collage production. Principal amongst these influences is Max Ernst’s ‘historical’ collage aesthetic. Using the theories of Marshall McLuhan, I argue that Barthelme’s technique of pictorial collage is an attempt to rival contemporary systems of representation (like television and radio), while recognizing the significance of mass media on his work. Capturing the evolving landscape of contemporary mass culture, I examine the relationship between text and image in Barthelme’s short stories.
‘Break out that Perl script’: The imaging and imagining of code in The Social Network and Catfish
Authors: Dinnen Zara
Published: July 2013

For most users of digital technology, code is the hidden engine of their experience: silent, disguised, unknown and possibly unknowable. It is this experience of code that will be the subject of this article. Code, which is often perceived as textual, runs software, which is predominantly received as graphical. As with printing and handwritten script, all text is technically graphical, but this observation refers specifically to the increasing use of graphic icons, and visual media, to form the language of digital communications – the egg-timer, the pointer, Twitter and Facebook ‘buttons’, video CVs and avatars.

This article will consider how the user encounter with code, as image, can perhaps be brought to our attention through visual narratives that attempt to represent digital communication and programming. The article will begin with a consideration of code itself as a problematic imagetext: that is, code as a semantic, or linguistic, material that is not readable in a human context, that persists as a sign until the instance of its being run – an instance of potential performativity. It will do so through a discussion of critical interventions in the field of code studies by scholars such as Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Alexander Galloway and Adrian Mackenzie. Having established this reading, the article will move on to consider how code might resist representation in narrative form, particularly in film. It will do so through a discussion of Matthew Kirschenbaum’s term ‘medial ideology’, a construct that references fictional representations of code and coding that wilfully obscure the actual mechanical process. The main section of the article will be given over to tracing Kirschenbaum’s term through two recent films that creatively interpret the difficulties of depicting computing and communication on screen, The Social Network (Fincher, 2010), and Catfish (Joost and Schulman, 2010).
The genus Pseudo-nitzschia (Bacillariophyceae) in Malaysia, including new records and a key to species inferred from morphology-based phylogeny
Authors: Teng Sing Tung , Leaw Chui Pin , Lim Hong Chang , Lim Po Teen
Published: July 2013

Species of the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia are known to produce domoic acid that is responsible for amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP). To investigate the potential risk of ASP and species occurrence of toxic or potentially toxic Pseudo-nitzschia in Malaysian waters, plankton samples were collected from 17 locations. Samples were examined through transmission electron microscopy. Species of Pseudo-nitzschia were identified on the basis of the frustule morphology and morphometric measurements. Twenty-two well-described species were recorded, of which 14 are new records for Malaysia. A new morphotype, closely resembling species in the pseudodelicatissima complex, was also discovered. The morphotype differs from other species in the complex by its lower densities of fibulae and striae. Nine of the species have previously been associated with ASP events worldwide. Our study recorded for the first time high species richness of Pseudo-nitzschia in the confined coasts of Malaysia. In addition, we performed a morphology-based phylogeny and proposed a key to Pseudo-nitzschia species, with a special emphasis on the poroid structure of the striae, to aid in species identification.