I love you, that’s why I ignore you.

How does the analyst understand his or her patient’s lack of response to events precipitated by the analyst, especially absences? The author offers an explanation based on a unique form of caring. A. Green’s (1972) concept of the dead mother is crucial to this understanding, as is the distinction among hate, love, and care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Ca/P-Doped Titanium Dioxide Layer Produced by Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation: Effects of Applied Voltage and Heat Treatment

Plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) is a technique that produces a hard oxide layer on the titanium surface where its properties can be tailored by changing the process parameters or by a posterior heat treatment (HT). In this work, a TiO₂ layer with different crystallinity was produced by PEO with different applied voltages (250 to 400 V) and post-HT at 600°C. Our aim was to evaluate the influence of the PEO voltage and HT on the mechanical and tribological properties of anodized Ti. There is an increase in pore size, oxide thickness, and Ca/P ratio for the oxide layer with the applied voltage during the PEO process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicated an increase in the crystalline rutile phase in the oxide layer with voltage and HT. Nanoindentation shows an increase in the oxide hardness and elastic modulus with increased voltage and HT, leading to an improvement in the wear resistance.     

Synthesis of Alkyl Fructosides

The anomeric alkylation of D-fructose is efficiently catalyzed by mild acid catalysts. Degradation of fructose is negligible under the conditions applied.     

Removing low ppb level perchlorate, RDX, and HMX from groundwater with cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) pre-loaded activated carbon

Perchlorate contaminates vast amounts of groundwater throughout the United States which could potentially be used as potable water. Activated carbon pre-loaded with cetyltrimethylammonium chloride has been shown in this research to be an effective adsorbent for removing perchlorate from three low conductivity (50-66 microS/cm) groundwaters containing perchlorate (ClO(4)(-)) concentrations of 0.85, 1.0, and 5.6 parts per billion (ppb), respectively. In rapid small-scale column tests (RSSCTs), the virgin granular activated carbon (GAC) (used as a control) treated between 20,000 and 40,000 bed volumes (BV) of water. In contrast, the activated carbon that was pre-loaded with CTAC processed 170,000-270,000 BV before perchlorate was detected above 0.25 ppb in the effluent. Though this pre-loading significantly increased the capacity for perchlorate, it also diminished the GAC's capacity to remove organics. The groundwater containing 1 ppb ClO(4)(-) also contained the nitro-organics HMX (0.6 ppb) and RDX (5.5-6.6 ppb). RDX was detected in the effluent from the CTAC-pre-loaded bed after only 8000 BV had been processed whereas 308,000 BV could be processed through the virgin bed before RDX was detected. Likewise, HMX breakthrough was observed after 116,000 BV in the CTAC-pre-loaded bed while the virgin RSSCT exhibited no breakthrough of HMX during a test that was operated for 309,000 BV. However, by combining a CTAC-pre-loaded bed followed by a virgin GAC bed in series, both perchlorate and RDX could be removed for the same length of time.     

An efficient evolutionary algorithm to optimize the Choquet integral

Information fusion is an essential part of nearly all systems whose goal is to derive decisions from multiple sources. Often, a fusion solution has parameters and the goal is to learn them from data. Herein, we propose efficient evolutionary algorithm (EA) operators to facilitate learning the Choquet integral (ChI). Whereas many EAs provide a way to solve complex, unconstrained optimization tasks, most tend to perform relatively poor in light of constraints. Recently, a few EA-based approaches to optimizing the ChI have appeared. Namely, these methods focus on fixing the values of variables so conditions are met or feasible candidate pairs are identified for steps such as crossover. Herein, we introduce a new set of transparent operators that are guaranteed to naturally preserve constraints, thus eliminating the need to resort to costly evaluations and fixing of constraint violations. In particular, our method scales well to large numbers of inequality constraints, something that prior work does not. The proposed algorithm, coined efficient ChI genetic algorithm (ECGA), is evaluated on several synthetic data sets and it is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. In particular, we show benefits in terms of solutions found and the time it takes to find such an answer.     

Enhanced Fracture Toughness in Layered Microcomposites of Ce-ZrO2 and Al2O3

Laminar composites, containing layers of Ce-ZrO₂ and either Al₂O₃ or a mixture of Al₂O₃ and Ce-ZrO₂, have been fabricated using a colloidal method that allowed formation of layers with thicknesses as small as 10 μm. Strong interactions between these layers and the martensitic transformation zones surrounding cracks and indentations have been observed. In both cases, the transformation zones spread along the region adjacent to the layer, resulting in an increased fracture toughness. The enhanced fracture toughness was observed for cracks growing parallel to the layers as well as for those that were oriented normal to the layers.