Copper–4,4′-dipyridyl coordination compound as solid reagent for spectrophotometric determination of reducing sugar employing a multicommutation approach

In this work a multicommuted flow system employing copper–4,4′- dipyridyl coordination compound as the solid-phase reagent for the spectrophotometric determination of reducing sugar was developed. The coordination compound was synthesized through a reaction of the 4,4′-dipyridyl and copper (II) nitrate, under hydrothermal conditions. The complex was characterized by infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), power X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). Based on the characterization, a multicommuted spectrophotometric procedure for the determination of reducing sugar using copper (II) complex as solid reagent is proposed. The proposed method was based on the redox reaction between a monosaccharide, such as fructose and glucose (reducing sugar) and Cu(II). This reaction, mediated in an alkaline medium, produces a yellow compound that can be determined by absorption electronic spectroscopy (λ_ABS = 420 nm). Under optimum experimental conditions, a linear response ranging from 1.0 to 20.0 g L⁻¹ (R = 0.9978 and n = 5), a detection (3σ criterion) and quantification (10σ criterion) limit estimated at 0.23 and 0.75 g L⁻¹, respectively, a standard deviation relative of 4.7% (n = 7), for a reference solution of 10.0 g L⁻¹ reducing sugar, and a sampling rate of 75 determinations per hour were achieved. The proposed system was applied to the determination of reducing sugars in coconut water and juices. The analysis of ten samples and the application of the t-test to the results found, and those obtained using reference procedures (AOAC), provided no significant differences at a 95% confidence level. This system enabled the analysis of reducing sugar with ease and simplicity, providing a significant economy of the solid reagent (600 μg per determination) and reducing effluent generation.     

Mining citizen emotions to estimate the urgency of urban issues

Crowdsourcing technology offers exciting possibilities for local governments. Specifically, citizens are increasingly taking part in reporting and discussing issues related to their neighborhood and problems they encounter on a daily basis, such as overflowing trash-bins, broken footpaths and lifts, illegal graffiti, and potholes. Pervasive citizen participation enables local governments to respond more efficiently to these urban issues. This interaction between citizens and municipalities is largely promoted by civic engagement platforms, such as See-Click-Fix, FixMyStreet, CitySourced, and OpenIDEO, which allow citizens to report urban issues by entering free text describing what needs to be done, fixed or changed. In order to develop appropriate action plans and priorities, government officials need to figure out how urgent are the reported issues. In this paper we propose to estimate the urgency of urban issues by mining different emotions that are implicit in the text describing the issue. More specifically, a reported issue is first categorized according to the emotions expressed in it, and then the corresponding emotion scores are combined in order to produce a final urgency level for the reported issue. Our experiments use the SeeClickFix hackathon data and diverse emotion classification algorithms. They indicate that (i) emotions can be categorized efficiently with supervised learning algorithms, and (ii) the use of citizen emotions leads to accurate urgency estimates. Further, using additional features such as the type of issue or its author leads to no further accuracy gains.     

二碘化钐在分子内环化反应中的应用

综述了二碘化钐在分子内环化反应中的应用。     

Chemistry of cement hydration in polymer-modified pastes containing lead compounds

The role of polymeric additives on the hydration process of cement pastes admixed with a lead compound (Pb₃O₄) was investigated. Three series of pastes were prepared: the reference series, mixing water with Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC), and two series in which whether a styrene–butadiene rubber latex or a superplasticiser based on acrylic-modified polymer was added to the pastes. For each series, 5 and 10 wt% of Pb were mixed with the pastes. Phase analysis and microstructural characterisation were carried out by means of X-ray powder diffraction and SEM–EDX. Thermogravimetric analysis was performed to monitor the hydration degree of the three pastes; indeed, quantitative determination of portlandite and calcite was performed.Dynamic leach tests were performed on solidified monoliths to evaluate the effective immobilisation of Pb₃O₄. After 384 h leaching, excellent results were obtained by pastes mixed with superplasticiser that showed a cumulative release of Pb equal to 0.62 mg/l for samples containing 5 wt% of Pb, and equal to 0.84 mg/l for samples bearing 10 wt% of Pb.     

Preparation and properties of a new porous ceramic material used in clean energy field

At high temperature, the oxide redox reactions of ceria can split H₂O and CO₂ to produce H₂ and CO, so porous ceria with high temperature resistance and high specific surface area has an important foreground in clean energy applications. In this work, a reticulated porous ceria ceramic material with interconnected porous structure was prepared by the impregnation technique using organic polyurethane sponges as template. The influences of pretreated sponge, dipping time length, pore size and sintering temperature on the porosity and strength of the porous ceria ceramics were systematically studied. With the increasing sintering temperature, the glass phase occurred and led to an increase in strength, but an decrease in porosity. Eventually, we analyzed the relationships between porosity and strength of these porous materials, aiming to provide theoretical and practical references for its application in clean-energy field.     

Sliding wear behavior of copper alloy contact wire against copper-based strip for high-speed electrified railways

This paper reports the study of the sliding wear behavior of the Cu–Ag–Cr wire. Cu–Ag–Cr alloy is a promising contact wire material for high-speed electrified railways, which has an excellent combination of mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. Wear tests were conducted under laboratory with a special sliding wear apparatus, which simulated the tribological conditions of sliding current collectors on overhead wires in the railway system. The Cu–Ag–Cr alloy wire was slid against a copper-based powder metallurgy strip under unlubricated conditions. The same strip as those in the train systems were used. Worn surfaces of the Cu–Ag–Cr alloy wire were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectrum (EDS). Within the studied range of electrical current, normal pressure and sliding speed, the wear rate increased with the increasing electrical current and the sliding distance. Compared with a Cu–Ag contact wire under the same conditions, the Cu–Ag–Cr alloy wire had much better wear resistance. Adhesive wear, abrasive wear and arc erosion were the dominant mechanisms during the electrical sliding processes.     

Carrier concentration dependence of donor activation energy in n-type GaN epilayers grown on Si (1 1 1) by plasma-assisted MBE

The n-type GaN layers were grown by plasma-assisted MBE and either intentionally doped with Si or unintentionally doped. The optical characteristics of a donor level in Si-doped, GaN were studied in terms of photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy as a function of electron concentration. Temperature dependent PL measurements allowed us to estimate the activation energy of a Si-related donor from temperature-induced decay of PL intensity. PL peak positions, full width at half maximum of PL and activation energies are found to be proportional to the cube root of carrier density. The involvement of donor levels is supported by the temperature-dependent electron concentration measurements.     

Atomistic tight-binding computations of the electronic properties of ZnSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals under applied electric field

The effect of applied electric field on the electronic properties of spherical ZnSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals of experimentally relevant size is investigated by the atomistic tight-binding theory. Using this model, the calculations show that a range of electronic properties, including the single-particle spectra, atomistic characters, charge densities, excitonic energies, ground-state coulomb energies, overlaps of the electron and hole wave functions and oscillation strengths, all depend on the strengths of the applied electric field. The spatial distributions of the electron and hole wave functions are induced by the applied electric field. The analysis demonstrates a clear manipulation of the electronic properties of ZnSe/ZnS core/shell nanocrystals by introducing and varying the applied electric field strengths. According to the comprehensive investigations, I suppose that these atomistic computations will be of prospective help for experimental works concentrated on the new optoelectronic devices based on the applied electric field.