Terms Of Quantitative Analysis Research Articles

Investigative Approaches for Pollutants in Water: Aligning with Water Framework Directive Maximum Allowable Concentrations

In the wake of rapid advancements in the pharmaceutical, food, and agricultural industries, the environment faces an increasing influx of diverse compounds, both intentionally and unintentionally released. These compounds fall into two categories: persistent and emerging pollutants. Persistent pollutants, characterized by their resistance to degradation and potential to accumulate in the environment, pose serious ecological threats. The Water Framework Directive (WFD) plays a pivotal role in monitoring and regulating these substances. This review discusses various contemporary analytical approaches to determine problematic substances, including benzo(a)pyrene, cypermethrin, dichlorvos, heptachlor, and heptachlor epoxide, aligning with the priorities outlined in the 2013 WFD classification. This review focuses on diverse water sampling methods, sample preparation techniques, and analytical methods, encompassing chromatographic, spectroscopic, and electrochemical approaches, with the primary goal of achieving the requirement laid on analytical methods used for the determination of maximum allowable concentrations defined in the WFD. Chromatographic methods, utilizing diverse mass spectrometers, have achieved detection limits as low as 10−6 μg/L, while modern electroanalytical techniques reach levels as low as 10−13 μg/L, reflecting an ongoing collective effort to enhance monitoring and safeguard the health of aquatic ecosystems. From sampling methods, large-volume sampling and passive sampling devices have been shown to be a cost-effective and modern solution, addressing limitations in traditional sampling methods, even if both of them face important pros and cons in terms of quantitative analysis.

U structured network with three encoding paths for breast tumor segmentation

Breast ultrasound segmentation remains challenging because of the blurred boundaries, irregular shapes, and the presence of shadowing and speckle noise. The majority of approaches stack convolutional layers to extract advanced semantic information, which makes it difficult to handle multiscale issues. To address those issues, we propose a three-path U-structure network (TPUNet) that consists of a three-path encoder and an attention-based feature fusion block (AFF Block). Specifically, instead of simply stacking convolutional layers, we design a three-path encoder to capture multiscale features through three independent encoding paths. Additionally, we design an attention-based feature fusion block to weight and fuse feature maps in spatial and channel dimensions. The AFF Block encourages different paths to compete with each other in order to synthesize more salient feature maps. We also investigate a hybrid loss function for reducing false negative regions and refining the boundary segmentation, as well as the deep supervision to guide different paths to capture the effective features under the corresponding receptive field sizes. According to experimental findings, our proposed TPUNet achieves more excellent results in terms of quantitative analysis and visual quality than other rival approaches.

Building a resillient digital society of young Europeans: an assesment of Kosovo's standing and needs for a digital citizenry

This article discusses the level of digital citizenship development in Kosovo as the newest country as well as representing the youngest population in Europe. The development of this article is based on a quantitative study as well as qualitative analysis of generated statistical results and the role of the public institution in awareness, promotion, and management of the digital citizenry. In terms of quantitative analysis, a survey was conducted with a group of the population at university level aged 18–24 with 778 respondents. The questionnaire was based on 9 main traits of digital citizenship designed by Ribble and Bailey 2007. In terms of qualitative analysis, the article focuses on the main legal infrastructure and strategic documents of Kosovo to determine its standing on this new concept and a needs analysis followed by specific recommendations on how to deal with it.

Patient-reported experience in lung and breast cancer through a patient journey

ObjectiveTo analyse a patient journey based on the experience reported by breast and lung cancer patients at Spanish hospital. MethodA mixed design was used, with interviews with 16 health professionals and 25 patients (qualitative method) and a Net Promoter Score questionnaire to 127 patients (quantitative method). Inclusion criteria: oncology patients > 18 years treated in hospital between February- May 2019. Exclusion criteria: paediatric patients, in palliative care or who were hospitalised at the time of the study. ResultsSix phases were identified from the data obtained in the qualitative method: my life before diagnosis; discovery; initiation; treatment; follow-up; and my current life. In the my life before diagnosis phase, a functional level of experience was established, as patients’ lives met their expectations. In the discovery phase, patients’ expectations were observed to be met, although several satellite experiences were found. In the initiation phase, the experience tended to be negative due to long waiting times and emotional and physical stress. The treatment phase was defined as a basic-poor experience, due to waiting times and lack of institutional support. The experience in the follow-up phase was positive in terms of tests and visits, but critical points were observed in waiting times. In the current phase, the effort made by health professionals to ensure the best possible treatment and care was mentioned. In terms of quantitative analysis, a positive score (46%) was obtained for the Net Promoter Score indicator, as 60% of patients were promoters, i.e. they were satisfied with the service offered by the hospital. ConclusionsThis study provides insight into the experience of cancer patients in the six main stages of the disease. The most positive phases were “my life before diagnosis’ and “follow-up’ while the phases with a negative trend were “initiation’ and “treatment’ due to the waiting times and the emotional burden on the patient.

Analysis of Final Semester Assessment Question Items for Class XI Indonesian History Subjects

This research aims to determine the quality of the final semester assessment (PAS) questions in the Indonesian History subject Class Quantitative analysis is reviewed from the aspects of validity, reliability, level of difficulty, distinguishing power, and effectiveness of distractors. The results of the qualitative analysis of the research showed that the material aspect was met at 96%, the construction aspect at 95.14%, and the language aspect at 73.5%. Judging from the distribution of cognitive domain levels, category (C1) has 7 questions (14%), category (C2) has 35 (70%) questions, category (C3) has 3 questions (6%) and category (C4) has 5 questions (10%). The results of the quantitative analysis of the validity aspect showed that 39 questions (78%) were valid while 11 questions (22%) were invalid. The reliability of the questions is very high at 0.862. From the level of difficulty, 10 (20%) questions were declared difficult, 25 questions (50%) were medium and 15 questions (30%) were easy. Looking at the aspect of differentiating power, there are 6 (12%) questions in the poor category, 7 (14%) questions in the fair category, 26 (52%) questions in the good category, and 9 (18%) questions in the very good category, while the total category is 2 bad. (4%) questions. Judging from the effectiveness of the distractor, the category is very good 21 (42%) questions, functioning well 10 (20%) questions, functioning quite well 10 (20%) questions, functioning poorly 5 (10%) questions, and functioning not well/poorly 4 (8%) questions. Overall, the quality of the questions in terms of quantitative analysis is not good.

Pathways to water sustainability? A global study assessing the benefits of integrated water resources management

Integrated water resources management (IWRM) has been central to water governance and management worldwide since the 1990s. Recognizing the significance of an integrated approach to water management as a way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), IWRM was formally incorporated as part of the SDG global indicator framework, thus committing the UN and its Member States to achieving high IWRM implementation by 2030 and measuring progress through SDG indicator 6.5.1. This paper examines the extent to which the implementation of IWRM improves the sustainable management of water and the health of water-related ecosystems—a first-of-its-kind in terms of quantitative analysis on a global scale. To achieve this objective, we conducted regression analyses between SDG 6.5.1 (both IWRM (total score) and the dimensions of SDG 6.5.1) and key water-related environmental sustainability indicators: SDG 6.2.1a (access to basic sanitation), 6.3.1 (treated wastewater), 6.4.1 (water-use efficiency), 6.4.2 (water stress), 6.6.1 (freshwater ecosystems, although here the trophic state and turbidity variables were used) and 6.3.2 (ambient water quality). Our analysis covers 124 countries for all these SDGs, with the exception of SDG 6.3.1 and SDG 6.3.2, which cover 112 and 85 countries, respectively. Results show that IWRM—to different degrees—is mainly associated with the good status of water-related sustainability indicators, with the exception of water stress, water quality, and turbidity. We observe a strong impact of control variables such as governance arrangements, economic situation and environmental and geographical conditions. Lagged effects and the scope of the framework may also explain some observed variations in the degree of association. Our study highlights the importance of further uncovering the interlinkages between IWRM implementation and the achievement of water-related environmental sustainability. Overall, the results suggest that although IWRM implementation is primarily linked to sustainable water management and the health of water systems, context-specific factors should be taken into account when evaluating its effectiveness, to enable policy- and decision-makers to make the necessary adjustments to optimize its outcomes.

Finnish Teachers’ Views on their Pupils’ Writing Challenges

Abstract Finland is a country that supports public-only education that aims to provide the same basic education for all its residents. In the National Core Curriculum, strong reading and writing skills are considered a foundation for further learning and essential for civil society and democracy. The recent national evaluations done in Finland show the warning trend of weakening writing skills among school-age children, adding that when the individual differences in performance tend to grow bigger, it may promote “inequalization.” This article discusses how Finnish L1 teachers working at all levels of basic and secondary education view their pupils’ challenges in writing. The data consists of survey responses from a relatively large group of Finnish L1 teachers (N = 376). As part of the survey conducted in 2019, the teachers were asked to define what challenges the present day has brought to their classrooms in terms of writing learning. The survey data shows that the teachers mention challenges in language competencies, working skills, social participation, and developing voice and meaning in writing. These findings seem to reflect an emphasis on individual cognitive skills rather than seeing writing as social interaction and integration. The teachers commonly blame a lack of reading and increased use of social media for causing their pupils’ writing challenges, which also reflects the importance of sociocultural identification in all communication. This topic would need more detailed research in terms of quantitative analysis, in-depth case studies, and interventions to develop accurate writing pedagogy. Still, it is possible to note that the pedagogical thinking of writing may not yet be able to capture the ever-increasing importance of participation in textual communities, be it of a classroom group or societal scale.

Fractional-order modeling and optimal control of a new online game addiction model based on real data

The spread of online games has become more and more serious in recent years, which not only endangers the healthy growth of young people, but also has a certain potential harm to society. Therefore, how to effectively control the spread of games has become an urgent problem to be solved. To solve this problem, a new fractional model of online game addiction is developed in this paper. In the aspect of qualitative analysis, the non-negativity and boundedness of the model solutions are demonstrated. All equilibria and basic reproduction number are solved. The global asymptotic stability of all equilibria are proved by constructing ingenious Lyapunov functions. In terms of quantitative analysis, different from previous fractional order literature, we use a new method to fit the real data of game users in China from 2010 to 2021, and obtain the optimal fractional order α=0.98942 and model parameters. The estimated results show that the value of the basic reproduction number during this period is R0=7.1045. By setting different values of the parameters, the effects of all parameters on the model are shown. With the Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) and partial rank correlation coefficients (PRCC) techniques, the influence of all parameters in the basic reproduction number R0 are quantified and the means to control the spread of the game were generalized: isolation and treatment. Finally, the Fractional Euler Method (FEM) and the fractional Forward Backward Sweep Method (FBSM) are used together to solve the fractional optimal control problem and the optimal control strategy is determined. The results of this paper provide a new research idea for parameter estimation of fractional equation, and a more reliable result for controlling the spread of online games.

Phytochemical and antioxidant analysis in the aerial part of aerva javanica (burm. f.) schult. (amaranthaceae)

Plants are the important source for the discovery of new products of medicinal value for drug development. Secondary plant metabolites are chemical compounds produced by the plant cell, defending themselves from biotic and abiotic stress. The study aims about the qualitative and quantitative analysis of various phytochemicals present in the plant Aerva javanica (Burm.f.) Shult. (Amaranthaceae). The aerial part of the plant was extracted using hexane, chloroform and ethanol and screened for the presence of the secondary metabolites and in vitro antioxidant properties by standard procedures. The present study indicates the presence of alkaloids, flavonoids, phenols, coumarins, glycosides, carbohydrates, proteins and amino acids. Further findings revealed that the ethanolic extract found to have more constituents in the terms of quantitative analysis and antioxidant activity showed highest radical scavenging activity when compared with other solvent extracts.

Accuracy and Precision of Consumer-Grade Wearable Activity Monitors for Assessing Time Spent in Sedentary Behavior in Children and Adolescents: Systematic Review.

BackgroundA large number of wearable activity monitor models are released and used each year by consumers and researchers. As more studies are being carried out on children and adolescents in terms of sedentary behavior (SB) assessment, knowledge about accurate and precise monitoring devices becomes increasingly important.ObjectiveThe main aim of this systematic review was to investigate and communicate findings on the accuracy and precision of consumer-grade physical activity monitors in assessing the time spent in SB in children and adolescents.MethodsSearches of PubMed (MEDLINE), Scopus, SPORTDiscus (full text), ProQuest, Open Access Theses and Dissertations, DART Europe E-theses Portal, and Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations electronic databases were performed. All relevant studies that compared different types of consumer-grade monitors using a comparison method in the assessment of SB, published in European languages from 2015 onward were considered for inclusion. The risk of bias was estimated using Consensus-Based Standards for the Selection of Health Status Measurement Instruments. For enabling comparisons of accuracy measures within the studied outcome domain, measurement accuracy interpretation was based on group mean or percentage error values and 90% CI. Acceptable limits were predefined as –10% to +10% error in controlled and free-living settings. For determining the number of studies with group error percentages that fall within or outside one of the sides from previously defined acceptable limits, two 1-sided tests of equivalence were carried out, and the direction of measurement error was examined.ResultsA total of 8 studies complied with the predefined inclusion criteria, and 3 studies provided acceptable data for quantitative analyses. In terms of the presented accuracy comparisons, 14 were subsequently identified, with 6 of these comparisons being acceptable in terms of quantitative analysis. The results of the Cochran Q test indicated that the included studies did not share a common effect size (Q5=82.86; P<.001). I2, which represents the percentage of total variation across studies due to heterogeneity, amounted to 94%. The summary effect size based on the random effects model was not statistically significant (effect size=14.36, SE 12.04, 90% CI −5.45 to 34.17; P=.23). According to the equivalence test results, consumer-grade physical activity monitors did not generate equivalent estimates of SB in relation to the comparison methods. Majority of the studies (3/7, 43%) that reported the mean absolute percentage errors have reported values of <30%.ConclusionsThis is the first study that has attempted to synthesize available evidence on the accuracy and precision of consumer-grade physical activity monitors in measuring SB in children and adolescents. We found very few studies on the accuracy and almost no evidence on the precision of wearable activity monitors. The presented results highlight the large heterogeneity in this area of research.Trial RegistrationPROSPERO CRD42021251922; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=251922

Thermography evaluation of defect characteristics of building envelopes in urban villages in Guangzhou, China

In many cities, the building envelope is deteriorating and aging. Understanding the defect characteristics of the envelope is essential to increasing the safety of the house and reducing the loss of energy. A 3-day infrared thermography (IRT) experiment was conducted on 5 buildings (11 rooms) in an urban village in Guangzhou, China. The analysis includes qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis. In qualitative analysis, three types of building defects were found, namely, conduction thermal defects, ventilation defects and moisture. In terms of quantitative analysis, (1) an improved temperature factor framework (ITF) is proposed to evaluate conduction thermal defects, (2) the influence of different influencing factors on the thermal performance of the building envelope is analyzed. Qualitative analysis results showed that conduction thermal defects were the most common thermal defects in Nanting Village and occurred 28 times in five residential buildings. It is mainly distributed in the joints of different walls and the joints of walls and other structures. Ventilation defects and moisture were the other two causes of envelope defects. Quantitative analysis showed that orientation has an important effect on thermal defects. The temperature distribution of walls at different heights is different to some extent. Thermal bridges are more likely to occur on extended floors built on the original building.

An Efficient Probe-Based Routing for Content-Centric Networking.

With the development of new technologies and applications, such as the Internet of Things, smart cities, 5G, and edge computing, traditional Internet Protocol-based (IP-based) networks have been exposed as having many problems. Information-Centric Networking (ICN), Named Data Networking (NDN), and Content-Centric Networking (CCN) are therefore proposed as an alternative for future networks. However, unlike IP-based networks, CCN routing is non-deterministic and difficult to optimize due to frequent in-network caching replacement. This paper presents a novel probe-based routing algorithm that explores real-time in-network caching to ensure the routing table storing the optimal paths to the nearest content provider is up to date. Effective probe-selections, Pending Interest Table (PIT) probe, and Forwarding Information Base (FIB) probe are discussed and analyzed by simulation with different performance measurements. Compared with the basic CCN, in terms of qualitative analysis, the additional computational overhead of our approach is O(NCS + Nrt + NFIB ∗ NSPT) and O(NFIB) on processing interest packets and data packets, respectively. However, in terms of quantitative analysis, our approach reduces the number of timeout interests by 6% and the average response time by 0.6 s. Furthermore, although basic CCN and our approach belong to the same Quality of Service (QoS) category, our approach outperforms basic CCN in terms of real values. Additionally, our probe-based approach performs better than RECIF+PIF and EEGPR. Owing to speedup FIB updating by probes, our approach provides more reliable interest packet routing when accounting for router failures. In summary, the results demonstrate that compared to basic CCN, our probe-based routing approach raises FIB accuracy and reduces network congestion and response time, resulting in efficient routing.

Inclusive School Management: Transforming Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

It is widely accepted that inclusive education provides equal opportunities for special needs students to learn alongside many other students in the same environment, fostering an attitude of respect for differences and providing services to each child based on their specific needs. However, poor infrastructure, such as network issues, power outages, inaccessibility and unavailability, and a lack of digital skills, impedes online education. Therefore, the current study was aimed at finding out the differences in learning after and before the COVID-19 pandemic. This study adopted a mixed-method design, with a qualitative phenomenological method employing in-depth interviews and a crosssectional design employing a pre-posttest design for quantitative data, with a population consisting of all-inclusive school teachers from settings. The samples of this research were special assistant teachers teach with a total of three teachers per inclusive school for quantitative data and a minimum of eight teachers per inclusive school until for qualitative data. The data analysis was undertaken both quantitatively and qualitatively. In terms of quantitative analysis, a t-test was run to determine the difference in learning before and after the COVID-19 and a descriptive analysis for qualitative data. A triangulation was also employed after the data were collected for validation. Based on the findings, it is possible to conclude that the administration of inclusive schools has begun to adapt to the current pandemic conditions, which necessitate the completion of all teaching and learning activities online. The current study has a number of implications and limitations. © 2021. RIGEO. All Rights Reserved.

A detection method of two carbamate pesticides residues on tomatoes utilizing excitation-emission matrix fluorescence technique

A mind evolutionary algorithm (MEA) originated from genetic algorithm (GA) used to optimize back propagation (BP) neural network (MEA-BP) was proposed to detect two carbamate pesticides residues on tomatoes by excitation-emission fluorescence. Two toxic insecticides (Tsumacide and Carbaryl) were used as representative carbamate pesticides. Through a series of evaluation experiments, the optimized method had obtained relatively satisfactory results by comparing three parameters including iteration time, correlation coefficient and mean square error, which were 304, 0.99873 and 0.0057. In terms of quantitative analysis, relative error and average recoveries of two pesticides were 1.325%, 2.375% and 98.94%, 99.25%, respectively. In addition, it had satisfactory precision repeatability. Based on these results, MEA-BP model was found to work better which indicated that it had high convergence speed and accuracy for detecting pesticides residues on tomatoes. Moreover, the best cleaning method was determined. Hopefully, this MEA-BP method could encourage further research for accurate measurement and provide reference opinions on removing pesticides residues on food surfaces in daily life.

A method for the correction of size effects in microparticles using a peak-to-background approach in electron-probe microanalysis

We describe a correction method in electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) for size effects in microparticles. Accounting for size effects is important in quantitative EPMA of microparticles, where bulk standards are usually used for quantification. In this work, the correction was applied using peak-to-background ratios PB that are quasi-independent of absorption path lengths, which enables the difference in absorption between a microparticle and a bulk sample to be taken into account. For microparticles smaller than the X-ray generation volume, the X-ray emission inside the particle can be significantly affected by the transmission of electrons through the particle, thus requiring a correction in the measured PB ratios. Moreover, transmitted electrons induce Bremsstrahlung from the substrate that can also affect the PB ratios. This raises the necessity to include a correction of the substrate emission in the PB methods applied for microparticles. The present method enables to correct for the effects due to electron transmission as well as the parasitic emission of the substrate. In order to assess the validity of our method, the corrected PB of small particles were compared with those obtained for a bulk sample or a pseudo-bulk particle where size effects are negligible. Corrected PB were further used in a ZAF PB method [J. Lábár, S. Török, X-Ray Spectrom. 21 (1992) 183–190] to evaluate the correction model in terms of quantitative analysis. The study was performed on homogeneous spherical microparticles of K411 glass and microparticles of UO2. Both substrate and transmission effects were taken into account in the K411 glass particles, which led to significant improvements in terms of quantitative results. For UO2 particles, size effects did not have much impact on the PB ratios and accurate quantification was obtained from both uncorrected and corrected ratios.

A Heuristic Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithm for Solving the Carpool Services Problem Featuring High-Occupancy-Vehicle Itineraries

An intelligent carpool system provides convenience to both drivers and passengers who access carpool services to enjoy their ridesharing. The foundation of carpool-related issues is defined as the carpool service problem. This paper investigates a solution for this fundamental problem, more specifically described as the carpool service problem featuring high-occupancy-vehicle itineraries, which takes into consideration the enhancement of vehicular space occupancy for each portion of the ridesharing itinerary involving multiple objectives. As such, we propose the heuristic multi-objective optimization algorithm to solve the carpool service problem featuring high-occupancy-vehicle itineraries. This approach is based on the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm and comprised of two modules: heuristics search operation and multi-objective individual selection. In the experimental section, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm without the heuristics mechanism is considered an important competitor to the proposed heuristic multi-objective optimization algorithm (HMO-CSPHI). Experimental results demonstrate that HMO-CSPHI can generate superior performance to other compared methods in terms of quantitative analysis and visualization comparison.

Postcontrast T1 Mapping for Differential Diagnosis of Recurrence and Radionecrosis after Gamma Knife Radiosurgery for Brain Metastasis.

The differential diagnosis of radionecrosis and tumor recurrence in brain metastases is challenging. We investigated the diagnostic efficiency of postcontrast T1 mapping in solving this problem. Between March 2016 and June 2017, fifty-six patients with brain metastases who underwent contrast-enhanced cerebral T1 mapping were recruited for this prospective study. The findings revealed new enhancement after gamma knife radiosurgery. The subjects were assigned to radionecrosis and recurrence groups based on follow-up (median, 11.5 months) and histopathologic results. T1 values of lesions 5 (T15min) and 60 (T160min) minutes after administration of contrast agent and their difference (T1differ) were compared between the 2 groups with the 2-tailed Mann-Whitney U test. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to determine the optimum cutoff values for differential diagnosis. There were significant differences between the 2 groups in T15min, T160min, and T1differ values (P = .012, P = .004, and P < .001, respectively). Relative to T15min and T160min, T1differ exhibited greater sensitivity and specificity (P < .001, respectively) in identifying radionecrosis. The optimum T1differ value for differential diagnosis was 71.1 ms (area under the curve = 0.97; 95% CI, 0.93-1.00), with sensitivity and specificity of 81.5% and 96.5%, respectively. Postcontrast T1 mapping is optimal for the differential diagnosis of radionecrosis and tumor recurrence. Among T1 parameters, T1differ is the most powerful parameter for differential diagnosis. Advantages in terms of quantitative analysis and high resolution portend the wide use of postcontrast T1 mapping in the future.

Evaluation of matrix effects on TOF-SIMS data of leu-enkephalin and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine mixed samples.

Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) is one of the most powerful methods to analyze biomolecules in biological tissues and cells because it provides detailed chemical structure information and chemical images with a high spatial resolution. However, in terms of quantitative analysis, there are issues such as matrix effects that often cause secondary ion intensity changes regardless of the actual concentration in a sample. For instance, the intensity of secondary ions related to peptides is generally suppressed when lipids coexist. Since the evaluation of biomolecules is crucial to understand biological phenomena, it is required to analyze peptides or lipids without matrix effects. Therefore, the mechanism of matrix effects regarding peptides and lipids in TOF-SIMS was investigated in this study. Leu-enkephalin (YGGFL, molecular weight of 555.3 Da) and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC, C44H84NO8P, molecular weight 785.6 Da) were employed to prepare model samples. Model samples contain different weight ratios of these two molecules. The intensity of secondary ions related to the peptide or the lipid was compared with control samples containing pure leu-enkephalin or DOPC. As a result, it is indicated that the intensity of DOPC related secondary ions is strongly enhanced by coexisting leu-enkephalin, while the intensity of leu-enkephalin related secondary ions is suppressed by coexisting DOPC especially in a low concentration range of the peptide.

Weight Determination of Sustainable Development Indicators Using a Global Sensitivity Analysis Method

Sustainable development (SD) evaluations have attracted considerable attention from governments and scientific communities around the world. The objective and quantitative calculation of the importance of sustainable assessment indicators is a key problem in the accurate evaluation of SD. Traditional methods fail to quantify the coupling effects among indicators. This paper presents a weight determination approach based on the global sensitivity analysis algorithm known as the extended Fourier amplitude sensitivity test (EFAST). This method is efficient and robust and is not only able to quantify the sensitivity of the evaluation indictors to the target, but can also quantitatively describe the uncertainties among the indictors. In this paper, we analyze the sensitivity of 18 indicators in a multi-index comprehensive evaluation model and weigh the indicators in the system according to their importance. To verify the feasibility and advantages of this new method, we compare the evaluation result with the traditional entropy method. The comparison shows that the EFAST algorithm can provide greater detail in an SD evaluation. Additionally, the EFAST algorithm is more specific in terms of quantitative analysis and comprehensive aspects and can more effectively distinguish the importance of indicators.

TOF‐SIMS matrix effects in mixed organic layers in Ar cluster ion depth profiles

Matrix effects are crucial for analyses using time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF‐SIMS) in terms of quantitative analysis, depth profiling and imaging. It is often difficult to predict how co‐existing materials will influence each other before such analysis. However, matrix effects need to be curtailed in order to assume the appropriate amount of a target material in a sample. First, matrix effects on different types of organic mixed samples, including a sample composed of Irganox 1010 and Irganox 1098 (MMK sample) and another composed of Irganox 1010 and Fmoc‐pentafluoro‐L‐phenylalanine (MMF sample), were observed utilizing ToF‐SIMS and the dependence of the secondary ion polarity of the matrix effects on the same sample was evaluated. Next, the correction method for the ToF‐SIMS matrix effects proposed by Shard et al. was applied to a comparison of the positive secondary ion results to the negative ones. The matrix effects on the positive ion data in both samples were different from those on the negative ion data. The matrix effect correction method worked effectively on both the negative and positive depth profiles. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.