Analysis of "total toxaphene" and selected single congeners in biota by ion trap HRGC-EI-MS/MS using congener-optimized parent ion dissociations

A method for the quantification of selected toxaphene congeners as well as "total toxaphene" was developed based on electron ionization (EI) tandem (MS/MS) ion trap mass spectrometry (MS) and a combination of fragment ion dissociations. Congeners were separated by high-resolution gas chromatography. Compared to conventional EI low-resolution MS, a 5-20-fold gain in sensitivity could be obtained for octa- or nonachlorinated compounds such as toxaphene #26 and #62 (according to Parlar nomenclature), allowing for their detection in the low picogram range in biota. In addition, response factors for important congeners such as #26, #32, #40/41, #42, #44, #50, and #62 deviated not more than a factor of 2, which is much less as compared to negative ion chemical ionization. This reduces the risk for systematic errors when determining total toxaphene on the basis of a limited number of reference compounds or the technical mixture. Furthermore, chlordanes and polychlorinated biphenyls did not interfere when applying the proposed MS/MS technique. The applicability of the method was tested by determining both total toxaphene and levels of selected congeners in six Arctic wildlife samples collected from Nunavut, Canada, as well as by repetitive analyses of the SRM 1588 certified reference material.     

Evaluation of in-air hand gestures interaction for older people

Universal Access in the Information Society - In-air gestural interfaces are gaining popularity due to the increasing availability and low cost of gesture recognition hardware. However, the current...     

Controlled Growth of Conductive AlN Thin Films by Plasma-Assisted Reactive Evaporation

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - In this work, the growth of conductive AlN thin films by plasma-assisted reactive evaporation at different filament-to-substrate distances was presented...     

硫化物应力腐蚀试验中硫化氢通气装置的改进

在满足硫化氢应力腐蚀试验要求的条件下，采用自动止通夹，改进了硫化氢应力腐蚀实验室中Ｈ２Ｓ气体的通气装置．该装置由化学反应发生Ｈ２Ｓ，可同时对多个试验容器通气；而且实现了出口 Ｈ２Ｓ气体的吸收再利用，减少了对环境的污染．     

Microstructures of Simulated Nuclear Waste

The microstructures of simulated tailored ceramic forms for the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant (ICPP) high-level waste were characterized by TEM. The ceramic forms were consolidated from simulated ICPP waste calcines with either silicayttria-based or silica–lithia-based additives by hot isostatic pressing. The hot isostatically pressed ceramic waste forms are composed of cubic CaF₂, monoclinic ZrO₂, stabilized cubic ZrO₂, tetragonal ZrSiO₄, and amorphous silicate phases which can be phase separated. The phaseseparated glass is a result of phase immiscibility in the soda aluminosilicate glass to the compositions of albite and mullite.     

The influence of molecular structure modification on the photoluminescence and optical absorption of thin copper phthalocyanine films in the near-IR range

We have studied the luminescence and optical absorption of thin films of copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) with a modified molecular structure of the peripheral fragments. The coefficient of absorption in the near-IR and visible range (absorption by defects) and the photoluminescence spectra exhibit correlated changes depending on the modification of the CuPc structure.     

Advances in optical path crossconnect systems using planar-lightwave circuit-switching technologies

This article highlights advances in NTT's optical path crossconnect systems that use planar-lightwave circuit switches. A photonic MPLS router that can handle up to 256 optical label switched paths is developed as one result of our R&D activities; mature OPXC technologies are adopted to create a practical OPXC system.     

Disconnected Processes, Mechanisms and Architecture for Mobile E-Business

With the tremendous advances in hand-held computing and communication capabilities, rapid proliferation of mobile devices, and decreasing device costs, we are seeing a growth in mobile e-business in various consumer and business markets. In this paper, we present a novel architecture and framework for end-to-end mobile e-business applications (e.g., point of sales). The architecture takes into consideration disconnection, application context, synchronization, transactions and failure recovery modes to provide mobile users with seamless and transparent access to business transactions and business-context specific data. In our architecture, we consider a novel business process design based on state-machines and event management to handle disconnection, resource limitations and failures. We designed, implemented and deployed a system for mobile e-business on clients (e.g., PDAs and PocketPCs) integrated with private exchanges and sell-side servers. The state-machine model with failure recovery mechanisms enables handling of one-to-many and many-to-one disconnections in large mobile e-business environments. The e-business framework on mobile clients is implemented based on J2ME, Webservices, and open XML standards. A detailed performance study of commerce transactions was done on different mobile client devices with diverse computing, memory and storage capabilities. We compare the performance of a purchasing application and the middleware on various devices such as PDAs and Laptops. We demonstrated that for small devices with limited capability the performance is reasonable. For devices with more computing capability, the response time is excellent.     

Some procedures for decision making in controlling high yield processes

Statistical process control based on the cumulative counts of conforming items instead of occurrences of non-conformances has proved to be useful for the manufacture of high-quality products. In this paper we study some interesting and useful issues of using cumulative counts in practice. The general problem in the control of high-quality products is first discussed, which leads to the calculation of the probability that a process is out of control when a single non-conforming item is detected. A decision graph is introduced with which we can easily judge whether the process is out of control when a non-conforming item is observed after a number of conforming ones, accompanied by the certainty level of this judgement. Next, using the equivalence of information on one non-conforming item found in a number of inspected items to that on zero non-conforming items in a smaller sample, we give a method for choosing a new starting point to reset the cumulative count after the detection of the non-conforming item. The procedures are all statistically justified and have the practical merit of simplicity in actual applications.     

trans-polyoctenylene as a processing aid for rubber: Influence on energy consumption and properties of rubber compounds

trans-Polyoctenylene rubber, TOR, was melt blended with different types of rubber in various proportions in a Brabender Plasti-corder. Energy consumption in mixing the blends indicated that TOR is an effective processing aid for a variety of rubber and inclusion of TOR in a blend can result in significant saving of energy. TOR of lower molecular weight (e.g. Vestenamer 8012) performs significantly better than TOR of higher molecular weight (e.g. Vestenamer 6213), both as a processing aid and as a dimension stabilizer.