Water as a reaction medium for clean chemical processes

Solvent usage is often an integral part of manufacturing process, whether it is chemical or another industrial sector. Thus, this unavoidable choice of a specific solvent for a desired manufacturing process can have profound economical, environmental, and societal implications. Some of the impacts are long lasting especially from an environmental perspective, which has been well documented in the scientific literature. The pressing need to develop alternative solvents for manufacturing processes originates, in part, from these implications and constitutes an essential strategy under an emerging field of green chemistry. Whereas there have been excellent advances in developing several alternative clean solvents, it is unlikely that the one solvent will be a panacea for various chemical protocols. This article provides some examples of using water as an alternative solvent for chemical reactions with wide-ranging possibilities that include direct use of water soluble renewable materials, C–C bond forming reactions using organometallic reagents, and exploiting the use of alternate energy sources such as solar, microwave and ultrasound in accelerating chemical syntheses.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Water as a reaction medium for clean chemical processes

Solvent usage is often an integral part of manufacturing process, whether it is chemical or another industrial sector. Thus, this unavoidable choice of a specific solvent for a desired manufacturing process can have profound economical, environmental, and societal implications. Some of the impacts are long lasting especially from an environmental perspective, which has been well documented in the scientific literature. The pressing need to develop alternative solvents for manufacturing processes originates, in part, from these implications and constitutes an essential strategy under an emerging field of green chemistry. Whereas there have been excellent advances in developing several alternative clean solvents, it is unlikely that the one solvent will be a panacea for various chemical protocols. This article provides some examples of using water as an alternative solvent for chemical reactions with wide-ranging possibilities that include direct use of water soluble renewable materials, C–C bond forming reactions using organometallic reagents, and exploiting the use of alternate energy sources such as solar, microwave and ultrasound in accelerating chemical syntheses.The online version of the original article can be found at     

Dismutation: a new development reaction for photographic systems

Dismutation of a low-valency metal compound into a compound of higher valency and the metal can serve as a development reaction to amplify the effect of light on a wide range of photosensitive materials. Developable photographic systems based on dismutation have been devised for cuprous oxide, the monohalides of indium, mercurous halides and ’bismuth subchloride”.     

Acceptable risk as a basis for design

Historically, human civilisations have striven to protect themselves against natural and man-made hazards. The degree of protection is a matter of political choice. Today this choice should be expressed in terms of risk and acceptable probability of failure to form the basis of the probabilistic design of the protection. It is additionally argued that the choice for a certain technology and the connected risk is made in a cost-benefit framework. The benefits and the costs including risk are weighed in the decision process. A set of rules for the evaluation of risk is proposed and tested in cases. The set of rules leads to technical advice in a question that has to be decided politically.     

Patient-specific simulation as a basis for clinical decision-making

Patient-specific medical simulation holds the promise of determining tailored medical treatment based on the characteristics of an individual patient (for example, using a genotypic assay of a sequence of DNA). Decision-support systems based on patient-specific simulation can potentially revolutionize the way that clinicians plan courses of treatment for various conditions, ranging from viral infections to arterial abnormalities. Basing medical decisions on the results of simulations that use models derived from data specific to the patient in question means that the effectiveness of a range of potential treatments can be assessed before they are actually administered, preventing the patient from experiencing unnecessary or ineffective treatments. We illustrate the potential for patient-specific simulation by first discussing the scale of the evolving international grid infrastructure that is now available to underpin such applications. We then consider two case studies, one concerned with the treatment of patients with HIV/AIDS and the other addressing neuropathologies associated with the intracranial vasculature. Such patient-specific medical simulations require access to both appropriate patient data and the computational resources on which to perform potentially very large simulations. Computational infrastructure providers need to furnish access to a wide range of different types of resource, typically made available through heterogeneous computational grids, and to institute policies that facilitate the performance of patient-specific simulations on those resources. To support these kinds of simulations, where life and death decisions are being made, computational resource providers must give urgent priority to such jobs, for example by allowing them to pre-empt the queue on a machine and run straight away. We describe systems that enable such priority computing.     

iTIRM as a tool for qualifying polishing processes

We report on what we believe to be a novel classification method for polishing processes that we apply in our laboratory on a regular basis. Two parameters are deduced from the in situ iTIRM (intensity-detecting total-internal-reflection microscopy) measurement method. Contrary to Preston's law, which gives the removal rate, the parameters of the iTIRM process are a measure of the change in surface quality (roughness, subsurface damage, and scratch and dig) and the duration of the polishing process.     

Triplex addressability as a basis for functional DNA nanostructures

Here, we present the formation of a fully addressable DNA nanostructure that shows the potential to be exploited as, for example, an information storage device based on pH-driven triplex strand formation or nanoscale circuits based on electron transfer. The nanostructure is composed of two adjacent hexagonal unit cells (analogous to naphthalene) in which each of the eleven edges has a unique double-stranded DNA sequence, constructed using novel three-way oligonucleotides. This allows each ten base-pair side, just 3.4 nm in length, to be assigned a specific address according to its sequence. Such constructs are therefore an ideal precursor to a nonrepetitive two-dimensional grid on which the "addresses" are located at a precise and known position. Triplex recognition of these addresses could function as a simple yet efficient means of information storage and retrieval. Future applications that may be envisaged include nanoscale circuits as well as subnanometer precision in nanoparticle templating. Characterization of these precursor nanostructures and their reversible targeting by triplex strand formation is shown here using gel electrophoresis, atomic force microscopy, and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) measurements. The durability of the system to repeated cycling of pH switching is also confirmed by the FRET studies.     

Operating load as a basis for evaluating fatigue endurance

Conclutions A knowledge of operating-load variation is very important for optimum evaluation of structural dimensions. A decisive factor in the choice of method is primarily the designer's experience, but apparatus and experimental equipment in the design laboratory play an important role. From the viewpoint of evaluation and checking machine part endurance the rain runoff method assumes considerable importance since it reflects modern ideas about material fracture better than other methods. However, use of this method requires modern computer techniques.Translated from Problemy Prochnosti, No. 9, pp. 34–40, September, 1980.     

Thermal reaction of viscoelastic bodies to thermal impact on the basis of a new equation of dynamic thermoviscoelasticity

A dynamic thermoviscoelasticity equation is proposed for viscoelastic bodies described by the Maxwell model. New dynamic thermoviscoelasticity problems are examined that generalize known solutions of thermomechanics within the framework of classical Fourier phenomenology of heat propagation in solids.Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 59, No. 3, pp. 409–419, September, 1990.     

Capturing intelligence as a reusable framework for manufacturing decision processes

A reusable framework consisting of hierarchical knowledge representation, preliminary design, iterative modification, four information flow and reasoning paths, and solution validation is conceived as a common substrate for addressing multiple components in manufacturing decision processes. The problems are represented in a state-space framework. An investment is made to design a rich representational scheme and to discriminate the promising solution states by utilizing its many implicit constraints in contrast to investing in heuristics operating on a more simplified representation of the problem. Although isolated segments of the described framework (e.g. hierarchical problem solving, abstraction) have been previously mentioned in knowledge-based problem solving, the framework distinguishes itself by exploring the nature of the interaction of these concepts in actually obtaining end results for manufacturing problems. Although hard to quantify, it is stated that the involved ‘intelligence’ from the manufacturing systems integration standpoint is the amount of reusability in the framework for different components of manufacturing decision processes. The reusability of the framework is illustrated by two such components: (i) integration of design and process planning, and (ii) facilities layout.     

Hole-burning spectroscopy as a probe of nano-environments and processes in biomolecules: a review

Hole-burning spectroscopy, a high-resolution spectroscopic technique, allows details of heterogeneous nano-environments in biological systems to be obtained from broad absorption bands. Recently, this technique has been applied to proteins, nucleic acids, cells, and substructures of water to probe the electrostatic conditions created by macromolecules and the surrounding solvent. Starting with the factors that obscure the homogeneous linewidth of a chromophore within an inhomogeneously broadened absorption or emission band, we describe properties and processes in biological systems that are reflected in the measured hole spectra. The technique also lends itself to the resolution of perturbation experiments, such as temperature cycling to elucidate energy landscape barriers, applied external electric fields (Stark effect) to measure net internal electric fields, and applied hydrostatic pressure to find the volume compressibility of proteins.     

Proposal of a new test method for the classification of oxidizing substances

Supplementary tests to the test method proposed by the United Kingdom to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for the classification of oxidizing substances were carried out to investigate whether or not it was reproducible in Japan where high humidity occurs in summer. Results from these tests made it clear that to produce data in Japan which are almost equal to those obtained in the U.K., the proposed method required that the temperature and humidity of the testing place be controlled. Furthermore, a new burning test method using a pot was proposed, which is easy to perform and enables the classifying of oxidizing substances in accordance with the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code. The method was proven to he competent enough to allow appropriate evaluation of the hazards of oxidizing substances.     

Soil models as a basis for modelling the behaviour of geophysical materials

Summary The aim of this paper is to show that the conceptual structure of constitutive models for granular materials, such as soils, may be taken as a starting point to model the mechanical behaviour of materials of geophysical interest. Clearly some modifications are necessary to cope with the range of pressures, time and temperature which are relevant in geophysics.To start with, it will be shown that an elastic plastic strainhardening model with an elastic nucleus may describe the brittle ductile transition of rocks due to increasing confining pressure. This will be done by using the cam clay model, well known in soil mechanics, with slight modifications. A further extension of the model will allow to describe the influence of inherent anisotropy on strength and deformability.The effect of temperature on yielding may be taken into account by means of the Prager's consistency rule. It is shown that when temperature increases a shrinking of the initial yield function occurs, which is the primary reason for ductile behaviour under high temperatures.Finally the modelling of creep of rocks under constant loading is considered.With 10 Figures     

Zernike polynomials as a basis for wave-front fitting in lateral shearing interferometry

A new method for handling Zernike polynomials is presented. Owing to its efficiency, this method enables the use of Zernike polynomials as a basis for wave-front fitting in shearography systems. An excerpt of a C(++) class is presented to show how the polynomials are calculated and represented in computer memory.