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Amplification of Circular Dichroism Signal Through Fluorescence Detection
Coordination compounds are essential in various applications, from catalysis in industrial processes to drug delivery systems in medicine to the design of smart sensors in material science. Understanding the chiral properties of these compounds can greatly enhance their performance, as molecular chirality plays a pivotal role in biological recognition and material functionality. Circular dichroism (CD) and Fluorescence-detected Circular Dichroism (FDCD) are two powerful spectroscopy techniques for probing the chiral properties of coordination compounds by understanding how they interact with polarized light. In this study, we explored the CD and FDCD behavior of coordination compounds, focusing on Tris(ethylenediamine) cobalt (III) chloride and Methylene blue (MB) complexed with β-cyclodextrin. The measurements were performed using multiple lasers, revealing distinct absorption and emission patterns indicative of the chiral properties of all tested complexes. The signal intensities varied with different concentrations and the alignment of polarized light, highlighting the system\u27s sensitivity to molecular structure and light modulation. Our future work will aim to expand these methodologies to additional molecular systems with a focus on optimizing detection limits and exploring broader applications in chemical and biological systems
Exploring the quality of PtSe2 thin films using Spectroscopic Ellipsometry and X-Ray Reflectivity
Platinum Diselenide is a material that varies its properties depending on thickness; most of the time it functions as a metal, but at a few layers thick, it acts as a semiconductor. Using samples grown at Penn State, we modeled the time-dependent growth and annealment data to model the Dielectric Function of Platinum Diselenide while being co-deposited on a Sapphire substrate using molecular beam epitaxy. Analysis was performed through spectroscopic ellipsometry to obtain the dielectric function. Additionally, X-Ray Reflectivity was used to determine the density and roughness of our Platinum Diselenide samples. Using these methods of analysis, we created a model that represents Platinum Diselenide at various thicknesses, which in turn will allow us to determine the quality of these samples
Drafting a Current Conditions Report on an Easement of the Brown Family Environmental Center
Intertextual Sentiments in Ulysses and The Odyssey
James Joyce’s masterpiece novel Ulysses is a text built upon its relationship to other texts. The very title is a reference to the Greek hero Odysseus and the epic poem that contains his story. The form of Ulyssesrelies heavily on the structure of the Odyssey for its movement. With chapters taking key events from the Odyssey as inspiration for their themes, characters, and events. One chapter for example is based on the episode where Odysseus travels into the underworld and Joyce’s stand-in character Bloom goes to a funeral. These structural and tonal suggestions have lead me to ask if this would come across in a sentiment analysis of the overall shape of the stories. My initial guess was that there would be some overlap but that the liberties Joyce employees with the events of the Odyssey–expanding some minor parts such as the Lotus Eaters and even adding some sections like the Wandering rocks at the expense of some sections Homer puts more emphasis on–and the difference in form between novel and epic poem would lead to some major structural differences. But I was surprised when surveying the results of the analysis that the actual arc of the stories were similar as were scenes in the emotional low points of the story, but the emotional high point of the stories were of completely different scenes. So I used a topic modeling to see if the differing peaks of Ulysses could be related to the different topics of the novels. Which appeared likely
AI Virtual Assistant for Student Disability Services: Implementing RAG-Enhanced Chatbots in Higher Education Support
When students with disabilities enter the college arena they lose many of the resources that supported them throughout high school, and suddenly are responsible for advocating for their needs and rights themselves. For some, this is an easy transition, but for most the sudden shift in setting, expectations, and responsibilities leaves them unprepared to transition smoothly into college life. A chatbot with sufficient institutional data and information about disabilities and accommodations could help college students with disabilities by providing immediate and personalized guidance throughout their college experience. The proposed accessibility support system implements a hybrid architecture combining a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline with an agent-based framework powered by LangChain. The RAG component enables context-aware responses by retrieving relevant institutional knowledge from a vector database, while the agent architecture facilitates autonomous decision-making and tool utilization through a chain-of-thought reasoning process. The system incorporates carefully engineered prompts and few-shot learning examples to guide interaction patterns, with particular emphasis on emotional intelligence through affect-aware response generation. This multi-faceted approach enables the agent to provide both informationally accurate and emotionally resonant support for students with disabilities in higher education settings