Single cells of bacteria and fungi were detected using a capillary electrophoresis-based test for microbial contamination in laboratory samples. This technique utilizes a dilute cationic surfactant buffer to sweep microorganisms out of the sample zone and a small plug of "blocking agent" to negate the cells' mobility and induce aggregation. Analysis times are generally under 10 min. Previously, a nutrient broth media was reported as an effective blocking agent; however, the natural background fluorescence from the nutrient broth limited the detection sensitivity to approximately 50 cells. In order to enhance the sensitivity of the technique down to a single cell, an alternative synthetic blocking agent was sought. Various potential blocking agents were screened including salts, polypeptides, small organic zwitterions, and surfactants. Zwitterionic surfactants are shown to be attractive alternatives to a nutrient broth blocker and mimic the nutrient broth's effects on cellular aggregation and mobility. Specifically, caprylyl sulfobetaine provided the sharpest cell peaks. By substituting caprylyl sulfobetaine in place of the nutrient broth, the fluorescence of the blocker plug was reduced by as much as 40 x. This reduction in background noise enables detection of a single microorganism in a sample and allows this technique to be potentially used as a rapid sterility test. All single cells analyzed using this technique displayed signal-to-noise ratios between 5 and 9.
Abstract. With the notable exceptions of two cases -that tensors of order 2, namely, matrices, always have best approximations of arbitrary low ranks and that tensors of any order always have the best rank-one approximation, it is known that high-order tensors may fail to have best low rank approximations. When the condition of orthogonality is imposed, even under the modest assumption that only one set of components in the decomposed rank-one tensors is required to be mutually perpendicular, the situation is changed completely -orthogonal low rank approximations always exist. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the best low rank approximation subject to orthogonality. The conventional high-order power method is modified to address the orthogonality via the polar decomposition. Algebraic geometry technique is employed to show that for almost all tensors the orthogonal alternating least squares method converges globally.
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