Modification of CaCO3 precipitation rates by water-soluble nacre proteins

Mineral growth in nacre and other CaCO₃-containing biominerals is controlled by biopolymers. Water-soluble proteins were extracted from nacre of the sea snail Haliotis laevigata by dissolving the mineral phase with 6% acetic acid. The influence of this protein mixture on CaCO₃ precipitation rates was investigated at different concentrations. A well-established assay for measuring the pH-value during CaCO₃ precipitation with and without protein additives was extended by calculating maximum precipitation rates from the pH-values. It could be shown that precipitation rates are greatly influenced by the mixtures of water-soluble nacre proteins. At very low protein concentrations (0.02 μg/ml) a rate enhancement in comparison to the pure supersaturated calcium carbonate solution by a factor of 1.4 was observed. At higher protein concentrations, a strong inhibitory effect occurred, with total inhibition at concentrations of 1.0 μg/ml and higher. Two unspecific proteins (bovine serum albumin and lysozyme) showed little or no modification of precipitation rates. In vivo, the function of the strong inhibition of CaCO₃ precipitation by nacre proteins at higher concentrations is presumably to prevent uncontrolled crystallization in the extrapallial fluid. The rate-enhancing capability of proteins at low concentrations may be explained by the presence of acidic and/or hydrophilic moieties.     

Polymerization of epoxy resins initiated by metal complexes

BACKGROUND: Processing parameters and material properties of epoxy resins can be vastly influenced by choice of curing agent. In this work, metal complexes were investigated as initiators for anionic and cationic epoxide polymerization. Systems for thermally induced and electron beam‐induced curing are described. RESULTS: Zinc or cobalt imidazole complexes of the type [M(imidazole)₂(anion)₂] are efficient initiators for anionic polymerization of glycidyl‐based epoxy resins. The complexes can be employed to prepare tailored resin systems ranging from fast curing systems at slightly elevated temperatures to systems with very high thermal latencies curable at temperatures far above 150 °C. Silver complexes [Ag(L)_n]SbF₆ (L = crown ether or alkene) are highly efficient initiators for cationic curing and low initiator contents of around 1% are sufficient to reach high degrees of crosslinking. The complexes are excellent initiators for both thermally induced and electron beam‐induced polymerizations. CONCLUSION: Metal complexes are powerful initiators for the homopolymerization of epoxy resins and can be designed not only for anionic and cationic polymerization but also for thermal and radiation curing. Based on this study and additional work, a library can be compiled which allows retrieval of optimized metal–ligand–anion combinations and adjustment of the initiators to the respective processing and material demands. Copyright © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry     

Forschungsgesellschaft Computer Automation

SciencenewsNeugrünoung

Forschungsgesellschaft Computer Automation     

Multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann models in three dimensions

This article provides a concise exposition of the multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann equation, with examples of 15-velocity and 19-velocity models in three dimensions. Simulation of a diagonally lid-driven cavity flow in three dimensions at Re = 500 and 2000 is performed. The results clearly demonstrate the superior numerical stability of the multiple-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann equation over the popular lattice Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook equation.     

Sparse on-line gaussian processes

We develop an approach for sparse representations of gaussian process (GP) models (which are Bayesian types of kernel machines) in order to overcome their limitations for large data sets. The method is based on a combination of a Bayesian on-line algorithm, together with a sequential construction of a relevant subsample of the data that fully specifies the prediction of the GP model. By using an appealing parameterization and projection techniques in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space, recursions for the effective parameters and a sparse gaussian approximation of the posterior process are obtained. This allows for both a propagation of predictions and Bayesian error measures. The significance and robustness of our approach are demonstrated on a variety of experiments.     

An Application of Extreme Value Theory for Measuring Financial Risk

Assessing the probability of rare and extreme events is an important issue in the risk management of financial portfolios. Extreme value theory provides the solid fundamentals needed for the statistical modelling of such events and the computation of extreme risk measures. The focus of the paper is on the use of extreme value theory to compute tail risk measures and the related confidence intervals, applying it to several major stock market indices.     

Basic investigations on debris cooling

An experimental investigation of boiling phenomena in inductively heated particle beds has been performed. The major aim of these experiments is to provide data for validating numerical codes used in reactor safety. The experiments can be divided in three parts: boiling experiments, dryout experiments and quenching experiments. In boiling experiments, the pressure gradients have been measured along the bed height for different flow modes, different heat inputs and different system pressures. In dryout experiments, the minimum heat input has been determined for which the particle bed starts to superheat significantly above the saturation temperature. The final test series deals with the cool down behaviour of strongly superheated particles by flooding them with cold water. The initial temperatures ranged from 200 up to 900 °C in top-quenching experiments and from 230 up to 450 °C in bottom-quenching experiments. All experiments were performed with pre-oxidised stainless steel balls of 6 and 3 mm diameter in a cylindrical crucible. The bed height was 640 mm and the bed diameter was 125 mm for boiling and dryout experiments, respectively 150 mm for quenching experiments. The experimental results are compared with various available dryout models.