Fischer–Tropsch synthesis: Deactivation of promoted and unpromoted cobalt–alumina catalysts

The loss in activity of Pt-promoted and unpromoted 25 wt% Co–Al₂O₃ catalysts has been compared under identical conditions except for adjustment of the space velocity to give the same initial CO-conversion. Both catalysts underwent a 200 h period of rapid, initial decline in CO conversion and then a slower, linear decline during the next 1000 h. Pt-promotion did not alter the cobalt dispersion (or average particle size) from that of the unpromoted catalyst but did increase the amount of cobalt that was reduced. When compared not by time-on-stream, but by the moles of Co converted per unit weight of catalyst, both the Pt-promoted and unpromoted catalysts decline in activity at the same rate.     

Victim retention for reducing cache misses in tiled chip multiprocessors

This paper presents CMP-VR (Chip-Multiprocessor with Victim Retention), an approach to improve cache performance by reducing the number of off-chip memory accesses. The objective of this approach is to retain the chosen victim cache blocks on the chip for the longest possible time. It may be possible that some sets of the CMPs last level cache (LLC) are heavily used, while certain others are not. In CMP-VR, some number of ways from every set are used as reserved storage. It allows a victim block from a heavily used set to be stored into the reserve space of another set. In this way the load of heavily used sets are distributed among the underused sets. This logically increases the associativity of the heavily used sets without increasing the actual associativity and size of the cache. Experimental evaluation using full-system simulation shows that CMP-VR has less off-chip miss-rate as compared to baseline Tiled CMP. Results are presented for different cache sizes and associativity for CMP-VR and baseline configuration. The best improvements obtained are 45.5% and 14% in terms of miss rate and cycles per instruction (CPI) respectively for a 4 MB, 4-way set associative LLC. Reduction in CPI and miss rate together guarantees performance improvement.     

Preparation of dibasic acid-containing soy phospholipids by chemical and enzyme-catalyzed transesterification and evaluation of their surface-active properties

The preparation of dibasic acid-containing soy phospholipid was made by transesterification reaction with alkyl ester of diabasic acid with both lipase and alkoxide as a catalyst. The extent of incorporation of a dibasic acid varied with the molecular size of the dibasic acid. The extent of incorporation in soy phospholipids was 4–13% in the case of adipic acid and 9–20% in the case of sebacic acid. The surface-active properties of these modified soy phospholipids were examined and were found to be different from those of the original (unmodified) soy phospholipid. The interfacial properties such as critical micelle concentration (CMC), γ_CMC, surface excess concentration Γ_max, and minimum area per molecule (Å), and thermodynamic parameters such as standard free energy of micellization, were found to depend on the hydrophobic part of the dibasic acids.     

Interchain crosslinking between NBR and polyacrylic rubber and effect on (i) processibility and blend-morphology

Flow behaviour of NBR and polyacrylic rubber blends have been studied throughout the entire composition ranges. The effect of preheating of the blends is also studied in order to understand the interchain crosslinking. Viscosity, extrudate swell, power law indices, have been studied as a function of shear rate and blend ratio. The shearing accompanied by blend ratio has a predominent effect on the rheological behaviour of the preheated blends due to microgel formation. From the rheological behaviour it appears that there is a phase inversion at around 50% of NBR, however, preheating does not change this trend. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Studies on the reaction of bis(diisopropyl) thiophosphoryl disulfide with silica in the vulcanization of NR

The reaction between bis(diisopropyl) thiophosphoryl disulfide (DIPDIS) and silica has been investigated. The study reveals that DIPDIS can be used as a coupling agent for silica. The chemical bond between the silanol groups of silica and DIPDIS has been established through the isolation and characterization of isopropyl alcohol that is eliminated from the reaction. The chemical nature of the bond is also supported by the IR analysis of the reaction products of silica and DIPDIS obtained both in the presence and absence of rubber. From the exploratory studies it is indicated that DIPDIS can also react with NR even during mixing of ingredients. When used with 2-mercaptobenzothiazole (MBT) or N-oxydiethylene-2-benzothiazole sulfenamide (OBTS) in the presence of silica, DIPDIS exhibits notable activation of cure and enhances the torque, modulus, tensile strength, and the scorch safety.     

The differential effect of polymyxin B1 on guinea pig lung mitochondrial and microsomal glycerophosphate acyltransferase

The activities of guinea pig lung mitochondrial and microsomal glycerophosphate acyltransferase differed in sensitivity to polymyxin B₁. At an antibiotic concentration of 1 mg/ml, the mitochondrial enzyme activity was stimulated twofold, but the microsomal enzyme activity was completely inhibited. Furthermore, the mitochondrial enzyme activity was stimulated by polymyxin B₁ without the addition of exogenous acyl-CoA. Additional experiments ruled out the possibility of polymyxin B₁ acting as a substrate for the mitochondrial acyltransferase. These results suggest either that the polymyxin B₁ sensitivity of mitochondrial and microsomal glycerophosphate acyltransferase is different or that their accessibility to substrates is different because the two isoenzymes are located differently in the different phospholipid microenvironment of the membranes.     

Insecticidal Effects of Organotin(IV) Compounds on Plutella Xylostella (L.) Larvae. II. Inhibitory Potencies Against Acetylcholinesterase and Evidence for Synergism in Tests With Bacillus Thuringiensis(BER.) and Malathion

Features of pesticide synergism and acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition (in vitro) were studied using a selected range of organotin compounds against the early 4th instar larvae of a highly resistant strain of the diamondback moth (DBM), Plutella xylostella, a major universal pest of cruciferous vegetables.Fourteen triorganotin compounds were evaluated for their ability to enhance the toxicity of the microbial insecticide, Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) and of the commercial insecticide, Malathion to Plutella xylostella larvae. Supplemental synergism was observed with triphenyl- and tricyclopentyltin hydroxides in combinations with Bacillus thuringiensis. Increased synergism was observed with an increase in the number of cyclopentyl groups on tin in the mixed series, Cyp(n) Ph(3-n) SnX, where X = OH, and 1-(1,2,4-triazolyl). The combination of (p-chlorophenyl)diphenyltin N,N-dimethyldithiocarbamate at LD(10) and LD(25) concentrations with sublethal concentrations of Malathion as well as of tricyclohexyltin methanesulphonate at the 0.01% (w/v) concentration with Malathion exerted strong synergistic effects (supplemental synergism) with toxicity index (T.I) values of 7.2, 19.8 and 10.1, respectively.Studies on the in vitro inhibition of acetylcholinesterase prepared from the DBM larvae showed that while most of the triorganotin Compounds tested were without effect on the enzyme, compounds containing the thiocarbamylacetate or the dithiocarbamylacetate moieties demonstrated appreciable levels of inhibition, being comparable in efficacy to commercial grades of Malathion and Methomyl.     

Supramolecular π–π assembly of a neutral [Cu(salen)] complex via the templating effect of an ionic inorganic complex Na2[Cu(mnt)2] forming a framework type material having well-defined channels

A classical ionic inorganic complex Na₂[Cu(mnt)₂] (mnt²⁻ = maleonitriledithiolate = 1,2-dicyanoethylenedithiolate), that acts as a template in assembling neutral [Cu(salen)] (salen = bis(salicylidene)ethylenediamine) complexes forming a framework type arrangement, is accommodated in the channel formed in the crystal structure of a new type of host–guest compound [Cu(salen)]₄ · Na₂[Cu(mnt)₂] (1). The non-covalent supramolecular interactions among [Cu(salen)] complexes and between [Cu(salen)] and [Cu(mnt)₂]²⁻ complexes in the crystal lattice of 1 result in weak antiferromagnetic coupling.     

An expressive framework and efficient algorithms for the analysis of collaborative tagging

The rise of Web 2.0 is signaled by sites such as Flickr, del.icio.us, and YouTube, and social tagging is essential to their success. A typical tagging action involves three components, user, item (e.g., photos in Flickr), and tags (i.e., words or phrases). Analyzing how tags are assigned by certain users to certain items has important implications in helping users search for desired information. In this paper, we develop a dual mining framework to explore tagging behavior. This framework is centered around two opposing measures, similarity and diversity, applied to one or more tagging components, and therefore enables a wide range of analysis scenarios such as characterizing similar users tagging diverse items with similar tags or diverse users tagging similar items with diverse tags. By adopting different concrete measures for similarity and diversity in the framework, we show that a wide range of concrete analysis problems can be defined and they are NP-Complete in general. We design four sets of efficient algorithms for solving many of those problems and demonstrate, through comprehensive experiments over real data, that our algorithms significantly out-perform the exact brute-force approach without compromising analysis result quality.     

Synthesis and densification of magnesium aluminate spinel: effect of MgO reactivity

Stoichiometric magnesium aluminate spinel was synthesized by reaction sintering of alumina with caustic and sintered magnesia. The volume expansion of 5–7% during MgAl₂O₄ formation was utilized to identify the starting temperature of spinel formation and densification by high temperature dilatometry. The magnesia reactivity was determined by measurement of crystallite size and specific surface area. Caustic magnesia and sintered magnesia behave differently vis-à-vis phase formation and densification of spinel. Densification of stoichiometric Mag-Al spinel was carried out between 1650 and 1750 °C. Attempts were made to correlate the MgO reactivity with microstructure and densification of spinel.