The migration from the internal coatings of food cans; summary of the findings and call for more effective regulation of polymers in contact with foods: a review

The analysis of migrates from the internal coatings of food cans showed that the present regulation is not sufficient to ensure safety of food contact polymers. The migrates often consist of complex mixtures of reaction products and impurities, and their harmlessness cannot be deduced from the use of non-toxic starting substances compiled in positive lists. The regulation proposed herein asks producers to analyse the composition of the migrates. It includes an upper limit for the molecular weight (e.g. 1000Da) and thresholds defining concentrations in the foods down to which components must be identified and evaluated. Primarily considering feasibility at reasonable costs, thresholds of 30 mu g/kg for individual components and 300 mu g/kg for the sum of the unidentified materials are proposed. Producers must be able to demonstrate that the individual components or mixtures exceeding this limit, including reaction products with food components, have no toxic effect.     

Modeling discrete event systems with state-dependent deterministic service times

In this paper extensions to the numerical solution method of deterministic and stochastic Petri nets (DSPNs) are introduced in order to cope with deterministic transitions with marking-dependent firing delays. The basic idea lies in scaling each row of the generator matrix of the Markov chain subordinated to a deterministic transition with marking-dependent firing delay by the delay value corresponding to this marking. Computational formulas of this solution method are implemented in the software package DSPNexpress which completely automates the solution process of DSPNs. The extended modeling power of DSPNs is illustrated by a single-server queuing system with Poisson arrivals, degradable deterministic service requirements, and finite capacity. Christoph Lindemann was supported by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology of Germany (BMFT) and by the German Research Council (DFG) under grants ITR9003 and Ho 1257/2-1, respectively. Reinhard German was supported by Siemens Corporate Research and Development and by a doctoral fellowship from the German Research Council (DFG) under grant Ho 1257/1-2.     

Correcting for measurement error in detecting unconscious cognition: Comment on Draine and Greenwald (1998).

A. G. Greenwald, M. R. Klinger, and E. S. Schuh (1995) have proposed a regression method for detecting unconscious cognition in experiments that obtain measures of indirect and direct effects of stimuli with suspected unconscious effects. Their indirect-on-direct-measure regression approach can produce misleading evidence for indirect effects in the absence of direct effects when the direct-effect measure has typical measurement error. This article describes an errors-in-variables variant of the regression method that corrects for error in the direct-effect measure. Applied to the uses of the regression method by S. C. Draine and A. G. Greenwald (see record 1999-10824-004), the errors-in-variables method affirms substantial evidence for indirect effects in the absence of direct effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

ZrV1.5Ni1.5 as electrode material in nickel-metal hydride batteries An in situ scanning tunnelling microscopy investigation

We have investigated the alloy ZrV_1.5Ni_1.5 by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with electron probe X-ray microanalysis (EPMA), X-ray diffraction (XRD), in situ STM (scanning tunnelling microscopy in an electrolyte under controlled electrochemical potential) and electrochemical charge discharge measurements. By means of EPMA we found that the alloy is composed of three different crystallographic phases. The main phase (≈75 vol.%) is ZrV_0.81Ni_1.47, the second phase (≈20 vol.%) is V₉₂Ni₈ and the third (≈5 vol.%) is a ZrNi based phase. Using in situ STM we investigated the different corrosion behaviour of the phases. At a potential of −600 mV versus the Hg/HgO reference electrode we observed the corrosion of the vanadium rich phase while the other two phases passivated.     

Palladium as a contact material for InSb semiconductors—The In-Pd-Sb phase diagram

The ternary In-Pd-Sb phase diagram was investigated in the compositional range up to approximately 60at.%Pd, covering the phase relationships of the compound semiconductor InSb. The investigation included differential thermal analyses (DTA), x-ray powder diffraction, and electron probe microanalyses (EPMA). The ternary equilibrium phase relations were studied for three isothermal sections at 300°C, 450°C, and 700°C, respectively. Nine invariant ternary-phase reactions were identified in the temperature range 150–750°C. A complete reaction scheme was constructed in the corresponding composition range, and the liquidus surface was derived from DTA data. In addition, six isopleths were constructed from the combined data.     

Windows Rootkits — und ihre Erkennung

Zusammenfassung  Im vorangegangenen Beitrag wurde in die Funktionsweise von Windows Rootkits eingeführt und gezeigt, welche Bedrohung sie darstellen. Dieser Beitrag gibt einen überblick über die m?glichen Erkennungsverfahren und erl?utert ihre Funktionsweise. Wilhelm Dolle ist in der Gesch?ftsleitung der interActive Systems GmbH in Berlin für den Bereich Information Technology und IT Security zust?ndig. Dr. Christoph Wegener ist freier Berater mit den Schwerpunkten IT-Sicherheit und Linux/Open Source und Leiter des Bereichs Business Development bei der gits AG in Bochum.     

A new reference standard for citation analysis in chemistry and related fields based on the sections of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Chemical Abstracts</Emphasis>

Citation analysis for evaluative purposes requires reference standards, as publication activity and citation habits differ considerably among fields. Reference standards based on journal classification schemes are fraught with problems in the case of multidisciplinary and general journals and are limited with respect to their resolution of fields. To overcome these shortcomings of journal classification schemes, we propose a new reference standard for chemistry and related fields that is based on the sections of the Chemical Abstracts database. We determined the values of the reference standard for research articles published in 2000 in the biochemistry sections of Chemical Abstracts as an example. The results show that citation habits vary extensively not only between fields but also within fields. Overall, the sections of Chemical Abstracts seem to be a promising basis for reference standards in chemistry and related fields for four reasons: (1) The wider coverage of the pertinent literature, (2) the quality of indexing, (3) the assignment of papers published in multidisciplinary and general journals to their respective fields, and (4) the resolution of fields on a lower level (e.g. mammalian biochemistry) than in journal classification schemes (e.g. biochemistry & molecular biology).