Erratum to: Electrochemical dissolution of metallic platinum in ionic liquids

The electrochemical dissolution of Pt in several ionic liquids (ILs) was studied. Different ILs were tested assessing their potential to dissolve Pt. Dissolution rate and current efficiency were evaluated. The main focus was on Cl containing ILs: first generation, eutectic-based ILs and second generation ILs with discrete anions. Pt dissolution only occurred in type 1 eutectic-based ILs with a max. dissolution rate of 192.2 g m^?2 h^?1 and a max. current efficiency of 99 % for the ZnCl₂–1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride IL, and 9.090 g m^?2 h^?1 and 96 % for the 1:1 ZnCl₂–choline chloride IL. The dissolution occurred through the formation of [PtCl_x]^y? complexes. To form these complexes, addition of a metal chloride was necessary. Furthermore, an IL with an electrochemical window of 1.5 V, preferably 2.0 V was required to achieve Pt dissolution. The added metal salt needed to have a higher decomposition potential than 1.5 V or should be a Pt salt.     

消费电子产品寿命终期的生态效益研究(一)

要改善消费电子产品寿命终期阶段的生态效益,对其作全面的评估是需要的。荷兰Delft大学倡导的环境权重再循环和生态效益(QWERTY／EE)理论,其目标是想以最小的产品寿命终期处理成本实现最大化的环境重建。本文生态效益概念的提出是基于一系列改进措施的实现,诸如改变切碎和分离装置,实现塑料和玻璃的回收利用,或对某种产品进行单独分类等。对75种之多的消费电子产品的分析清楚地显示：各种产品类别之间具有分组性能(在衡量环境和经济方面有良好的回收性)和明显区别。从这个意义上说,此评估将引发目前最实用的回收技术的进步。而且,环境权重再循环和生态效益概念,使得对当前和今后的寿命终期处理工艺进行选择和归类成为可能,并能进一步确定哪种方法可以带来最佳投资、环境收益比。对以玻璃为主体的产品中玻璃回收的增加导致了环境的明显改善。对含有贵金属的产品,贵金属的单独分类和处理,也具有同样的价值,比如手机。然而以上事实是基于经济可行的前提。其它的结论和成果对玻璃的回收利用来说只是对处于拆解状态下,并且有阴极射线管(CRT)或液晶显示器(LCD)的大型家电设备才具有生态效益。对中小尺寸的家电设备进行塑料回收利用,其额外成本相对于环境改善是很高的。在绝大多数情况下,对以金属为主体的产品只进行切碎和分离并不能导致环境或经济效益的显著改善。一般来说,提高寿命终期产品生态效益的各种方法导致了很复杂的环境、经济结果。因而,应建立寿命终期政策策略评估体系,在某些情况下还应进一步修正,来支持和提高生态效益改善措施。至于具体的结果,虽然不同的环境评估模型按不同的顺序把单个物质排序,但除了塑料回收环节外,改进措施在系统级上的结果显示出一致性。     

Identification of microbial contaminants present during the curing of honeybush tea (Cyclopia)

Honeybush tea (Cyclopia) is produced over a wide area of the Western and Eastern Provinces of South Africa and exported to several countries worldwide. It is traditionally manufactured by curing honeybush material for several days at relatively high temperatures and moisture contents and this results in extensive mould and bacterial growth. This leads to a product with inferior leaf colour and organoleptic quality as well as health concerns. Unlike during the manufacture of black tea, honeybush curing temperatures do not reach levels where these contaminants are eliminated. The microbial contaminants and the minimum temperatures necessary to eliminate these organisms were thus investigated. Yeast-Glucose (YG), Yeast-Starch (YpSs) and Czapek media were evaluated for the isolation of contaminants that developed during the curing of honeybush tea. YG and YpSs gave good results, while the Czapek medium was found to be unsatisfactory for the detection of microbial contaminants. A low pH (pH 5.0) favoured mould growth, while bacteria proliferated at pH 7.0. Honeybush material fermented in a curing heap and material fermented under controlled conditions at 40 and 50 °C showed microbial contamination, but no contaminants were detected on or in material fermented at higher temperatures (60, 70 and 80 °C). Two thermophilic moulds, Humicola grisea var thermoida and Humicola lanuginosa, a thermotolerant mould, Rhizomucor pusillus, and five endospore-forming species of the genus Bacillus were isolated. The data indicated that R pusillus was the predominant microbial contaminant. © 1999 Society of Chemical Industry     

Safety characterstics of the MARS nuclear plant

New design criteria in the field of small and medium sized nuclear reactors will be illustrated; particular consideration will be given to the reactor MARS (Multipurpose Advanced Reactor, Inherently Safe) now under development at the Department of Energetics, University of Rome.An analysis of plant behaviour during a Station Black-out accident has been performed using the computer program RELAP 5/Mod. 2.     

Automated serum peptide profiling using novel magnetic C18 beads off-line coupled to MALDI-TOF-MS

Serum peptide profiling by MS is an emerging approach for disease diagnosis and biomarker discovery. A magnetic bead‐based method for off‐line serum peptide capture coupled to MALDI‐TOF‐MS has been recently introduced. However, the reagents are not available to the general scientific community. Here, we developed a protocol for serum peptide capture using novel magnetic C18 beads, and automated the procedure on a high‐throughput magnetic particle processor. We investigated bead equilibration, peptide binding and peptide elution conditions. The method is evaluated in terms of peaks counts and reproducibility of ion intensities in control serum. Overall, the DynaBead‐RPC18‐based serum sample processing protocol reported here is reproducible, robust and allows for the detection of ?200 peptides at m/z 800–4000 of serum that was allowed to clot for 1 h. The average intra‐experiment %CV of normalized ion intensities for crude serum and 0.5% TFA/0.15% n‐octyl glucoside‐treated serum, respectively, were 12% (range 2–38%) and 10% (3–21%) and the inter‐experiment %CVs were 24% (10–53%) and 31% (10–59%). Importantly, this method can be used for serum peptide profiling by anyone in possession of a MALDI‐TOF instrument. In conjunction with the KingFisher® 96, the whole serum peptide capture procedure is high‐throughput (?20 min per isolation of 96 samples in parallel), thereby facilitating large‐scale disease profiling studies.     

Verification and synthesis of co-simulation algorithms subject to algebraic loops and adaptive steps

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer - Simulation-based analyses are becoming increasingly vital for the development of cyber-physical systems. Co-simulation is one such...     

Harmony filter: A robust visual tracking system using the improved harmony search algorithm

In this article a novel approach to visual tracking called the harmony filter is presented. It is based on the Harmony Search algorithm, a derivative free meta-heuristic optimisation algorithm inspired by the way musicians improvise new harmonies. The harmony filter models the target as a colour histogram and searches for the best estimated target location using the Bhattacharyya coefficient as a fitness metric. Experimental results show that the harmony filter can robustly track an arbitrary target in challenging conditions. We compare the speed and accuracy of the harmony filter with other popular tracking algorithms including the particle filter and the unscented Kalman filter. Experimental results show the harmony filter to be faster and more accurate than both the particle filter and the unscented Kalman filter.     

Multi-core symbolic bisimulation minimisation

We introduce parallel symbolic algorithms for bisimulation minimisation, to combat the combinatorial state space explosion along three different paths. Bisimulation minimisation reduces a transition system to the smallest system with equivalent behaviour. We consider strong and branching bisimilarity for interactive Markov chains, which combine labelled transition systems and continuous-time Markov chains. Large state spaces can be represented concisely by symbolic techniques, based on binary decision diagrams. We present specialised BDD operations to compute the maximal bisimulation using signature-based partition refinement. We also study the symbolic representation of the quotient system and suggest an encoding based on representative states, rather than block numbers. Our implementation extends the parallel, shared memory, BDD library Sylvan, to obtain a significant speedup on multi-core machines. We propose the usage of partial signatures and of disjunctively partitioned transition relations, to increase the parallelisation opportunities. Also our new parallel data structure for block assignments increases scalability. We provide SigrefMC, a versatile tool that can be customised for bisimulation minimisation in various contexts. In particular, it supports models generated by the high-performance model checker LTSmin, providing access to specifications in multiple formalisms, including process algebra. The extensive experimental evaluation is based on various benchmarks from the literature. We demonstrate a speedup up to 95\(\times \) for computing the maximal bisimulation on one processor. In addition, we find parallel speedups on a 48-core machine of another 17\(\times \) for partition refinement and 24\(\times \) for quotient computation. Our new encoding of the reduced state space leads to smaller BDD representations, with up to a 5162-fold reduction.

     

Evaluation of invasive instruments for assessment of veal colour at time of classification

In a random selection of 480 veal carcasses, invasive measurements were made on the longissimus lumborum (LL) and biceps femoris (BF) with the Colormet, Hennessy Grading Probe (HGP4; LL only) and Invasive Meat Colour Meter. Surface colour of the rectus abdominis (RA) was determined instrumentally with the Minolta Chromameter and Surface Meat Colour Meter and visually by two persons, using a colour standard. All measurements were made at 30-40 min post mortem. Of the measurements made on the RA, the Surface Meat Colour Meter was best related to both visual judgements (r = -0·79; -0·73). The correlation coefficient between both visual judgements was 0·77. Clear differences were found between the invasive instruments in their ability to determine veal colour. The correlation coefficients between the invasive measurements and both visual judgements varied for the Colormet L (?)-value from -0·18 to -0·35, for the HGP4 from -0·40 to -0·49, and for the Invasive Meat Colour Meter from -0·69 to -0·74. Both for LL and BF the best relationships were found between the Invasive Meat Colour Meter and the Surface Meat Colour Meter (RA).