IMAGING OF PARTICLE MOTION IN FLUID-SOLID SYSTEMS USING A GAMMA CAMERA

A new approach is presented for the characterization of particle motion in fluid-solid systems based on dynamic imaging with a gamma scintillation camera. A two-dimensional spouted bed of 200-500 micron diameter anion exchange resin beads was used as a test system. One or several beads were radiolabeled with the 140 keV gamma emitting radionuclide 99m-Tc pertechnetate, and particle velocity, panicle path, the spatial distribution of particle residence times, and local bed density were determined from the measured temporal and spatial distributions of particle activity. While care must be exercised in the interpretation of data when the scale for changes in the spatial distribution of activity approaches the limits of camera resolution, the method is quantitative, non-invasive, and well suited to the study of systems having symmetry in one spatial dimension.     

Phase Stability of Fine-Grained (Mg,Y)-PSZ

A fine-grained zirconia, which has been costabilized with yttria and magnesia, has been prepared. Its stability during subeutectoid annealing at 1100^deg;C, and its hydrothermal stability during hydrothermal treatment at 180^deg;C, have been determined and they are compared to those of Y-TZP and Mg-PSZ materials .     

Nitrate Radicals in Tropospheric Chemistry

Nitrate radicals are being recognized as key intermediates in a growing list of important chemical processes in the atmosphere. Here, the role of nitrate radicals (NO₃) in tropospheric chemistry is discussed, with special emphasis on results from field measurements, most of which have been made by differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS), with matrix-isolation electron spin resonance being an alternative technique. Nitrate radicals were observed in the atmosphere at peak mixing ratios of 350 ppt. Long-term observation of NO₃ shows that 24-h averages in rural air masses are closer to a few ppt. Nevertheless, the NO₃ radical plays an important role in the non-photochemical conversion of NO_x to HNO₃. Also, NO₃ is a strong oxidizing agent and initiates the night-time removal of atmospheric trace species such as olefins, aromatic hydrocarbons, and organic sulfur compounds. Finally, night-time peroxy radical production and release of reactive halogen species from sea salt aerosol might be initiated by NO₃ reactions.     

Bubble nucleation and growth in fluids

The nucleation and growth of CO₂ bubbles in non-Newtonian and Newtonian fluids that were initially supersaturated under different pressures are investigated in the present work. Quantitative information by means of two cameras reveals that at an immobile nucleation site the bubble grows rapidly followed by a linear increase in bubble diameter with time. After reaching a critical size, the bubble detaches from the stagnant site to rise in liquids with an exponential temporary increase for both the diameter and distance. A simple physical reasoning was proposed to qualitatively explain these observed phenomena. Recently, the growth rate and flow fields around a CO₂ micro-bubble were measured in a microdevice by a micro-Particle Image Velocimetry in water. This information at microscale gives new insight into the complex mechanism of bubble nucleation and growth in fluids and could help to develop a rigorous theoretical modelling and numerical simulation such as the Lattice Boltzmann approach.     

Mode I Fracture Resistance of a Laminated Fiber-Reinforced Ceramic

The mode I fracture resistance of a ceramic matrix composite has been measured. Simultaneous observations have revealed that the resistance is dominated by frictional dissipation upon the pullout of fibers that fracture in the crack wake off the crack plane. Numerical and analytical crack growth simulations have been compared with the experimental results. One important feature in this comparison concerns the occurrence of large-scale bridging. With these effects taken into account, the simulations and the experiments are found to be in good correspondence for acceptable magnitudes of the interface sliding stress.     

Mechanical Behavior of Several Hybrid Ceramic-Matrix-Composite Laminates

Several different hybrid laminated composites comprised of alternating layers of dense ceramic sheets (either SiC or Si₃N₄) and fiber-reinforced ceramic-matrix-composite (CMC) layers (Nicalon fibers with either glass or glass-ceramic matrices) have been fabricated and characterized. The effects of the reinforcement architecture (unidirectional vs cross-ply) and the relative volume fractions of the phases on the tensile and flexural properties have been examined. Comparisons have been made with the properties of the constituent layers. Rudimentary models have been developed to describe the onset of cracking and for the minimum volume fraction of CMC required to develop multiple cracks and thus obtain a high failure strain.     

A new combined computational and NMR-spectroscopical strategy for the identification of additional conformational constraints of the bound ligand in an aprotic solvent

This study documents the feasibility of switching to an aprotic medium in sugar receptor research. The solvent change offers additional insights into mechanistic details of receptor--carbohydrate ligand interactions. If a receptor retained binding capacity in an aprotic medium, solvent-exchangeable protons of the ligand would not undergo transfer and could act as additional sensors, thus improving the level of reliability in conformational analysis. To probe this possibility, we first focused on hevein, the smallest lectin found in nature. The NMR-spectroscopic measurements verified complexation, albeit with progressively reduced affinity by more than 1.5 orders of magnitude, in mixtures of up to 50% dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO). Since hevein lacks the compact beta-strand arrangement of other sugar receptors, such a structural motif may confer enhanced resistance to solvent exchange. Two settings of solid-phase activity assays proved this assumption for three types of alpha- and/or beta-galactoside-binding proteins, that is, a human immunoglobulin G (IgG) subfraction, the mistletoe lectin, and a member of the galectin family of animal lectins. Computer-assisted calculations and NMR experiments also revealed no conspicuous impact of the solvent on the conformational properties of the tested ligands. To define all possible nuclear Overhauser effect (NOE) contacts in a certain conformation and to predict involvement of exchangeable protons, we established a new screening protocol applicable during a given molecular dynamics (MD) trajectory and calculated population densities of distinct contacts. Experimentally, transferred NOE (tr-NOE) experiments with IgG molecules and the disaccharide Gal'alpha1-3Galbeta1-R in DMSO as solvent disclosed that such an additional crosspeak, that is, Gal'OH2--GalOH4, was even detectable for the bound ligand under conditions in which spin diffusion effects are suppressed. Further measurements with the plant lectin and galectins confirmed line broadening of ligand signals and gave access to characteristic crosspeaks in the aprotic solvent and its mixtures with water. Our combined biochemical, computational, and NMR-spectroscopical strategy is expected to contribute notably to the precise elucidation of the geometry of ligands bound to compactly folded sugar receptors and of the role of water molecules in protein--ligand (carbohydrate) recognition, with relevance to areas beyond the glycosciences.     

Automatic learners with feedback queries

Automatic classes are classes of languages for which a finite automaton can decide whether a given element is in a set given by its index. The present work studies the learnability of automatic families by automatic learners which, in each round, output a hypothesis and update a long-term memory, depending on the input datum, via an automatic function. Many variants of automatic learners are investigated: where the long-term memory is restricted to be the current hypothesis whenever this exists, cannot be of length larger than the length of the longest datum seen, or has to consist of a constant number of examples seen so far. Learnability is also studied with respect to queries which reveal information about past data or past computation history; the number of queries per round is bounded by a constant.     

Preparation and characterization of a number of amine salts of long-chain fatty acids

Summary Eighty-eight amine salts of long-chain fatty acids have been prepared, purified by solvent crystallization, and characterized. Forty-five of these were salts of palmitic acid. The rest included salts of capric, lauric, myristic, stearic, oleic, elaidic, and 12-hydroxystearic acids. A variety of aliphatic, aromatic, and heterocyclic amines, including primary, secondary, and tertiary amines, were investigated. The majority of these gave 1∶1 acid-amine compounds on solvent recrystallization of an equimolar mixture of acid and amine. Some of the amines gave no crystallizable salt, and with others the pure salt could not be obtained by this procedure. Under the same conditions the symmetrical alkyl, substituted alkyl, and aralkyl secondary amines investigated gave crystallizable compounds containg two molecules of fatty acid to one of amine. Molecular compounds of 2-aminopyridine with four molecules of saturated fatty acid were formed by recrystallization starting with a 1 to 4 amine-acid mixture. Surface-tension measurements were made for aqueous solutions of a few of the amine salts. One of the laboratories of the Southern Utilization Research and Development Division, Agricultural Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture.