Characterizations of NiCu/Cu Multilayers: Dependence of Nonmagnetic Layer Thickness

A series of NiCu/Cu multilayers were grown on (110) textured polycrystalline Cu substrates from a single electrolyte under potentiostatic deposition conditions. Microstructure, magnetoresistance and magnetic properties of the multilayers were investigated as a function of the nonmagnetic layer thicknesses. The structural studies by X-ray diffraction revealed that the multilayers have face-centered-cubic structure with preferred (110) crystal orientation as their substrates. The composition of the deposits determined by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy showed that the Cu content of the films increased as the Cu layer thickness increased. The scanning electron microscope studies showed that samples have homogeneous and smooth surfaces. Multilayers exhibited either anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) or giant magnetoresistance (GMR) depending on the non-magnetic Cu layer thickness. The multilayers with Cu layer thickness thicker than 0.7 nm exhibited GMR, but the AMR effect was observed to be dominant for the Cu layer thickness less than 0.7 nm. The GMR curves are broad in shape and the nonsaturated curves indicated the predominance of a superparamagnetic contribution. The GMR magnitudes of NiCu/Cu multilayers are found to be about 1–1.5 %. The vibrating sample magnetometer measurements revealed that the saturation magnetization decrease with increasing nonmagnetic layer thickness. The changes in the magnetic and magnetotransport properties might arise from the change in the Ni and Cu content of the samples caused by the variation of Cu layer thicknesses.     

Analysis of deposition mechanism during ultrafiltration of glycerin-rich solutions

Clarification of glycerin-rich solution is one of the potential applications of membrane within the oleochemical industry. However, one of the barriers in successfully utilizing the use of membranes such as ultrafiltration (UF) has been due to the fouling. In this work, flux decline during ultrafiltration of the glycerin-rich solutions was studied by using commercialized polymeric polyethersulphone (PES) membrane. Influence of fatty acids as foulants model (palmitic acid, stearic acid and oleic acid), pH of feed solution (3-10) and molecular weight cut-off (5 kDa, 20 kDa and 25 kDa) were analyzed. All the experiments were performed at constant pressure (2 bar) and temperature (40 °C). The Hermia's model was used to analyze the fouling mechanism during the flux decline which involve cake layer model due to adsorption of solute as well as pore blocking model. All the different types of flux decline kinetics were found to occur during the permeation of glycerin-rich solutions. However, the contribution of resistance due to cake layer formation was small for all the conditions studied. The fouling mechanisms were found to depend on the hydrophobicity of the PES membrane itself as well as the nature of foulants used in the study.     

PolyHIPE/pullulan composites derived from glycidyl methacrylate and 1,3‐butanediol dimethacrylate‐based high internal phase emulsions

Highly porous composites of poly(glycidyl methacrylate‐co‐1,3‐butanediol dimethacrylate) and pullulan were prepared as semi‐interpenetrating polymer networks by cross‐linking of high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs). HIPEs were prepared by using an aqueous phase made of pullulan dissolved in deionised water. Instead of conventional cross‐linkers such as divinyl benzene, 1,3‐butanediol dimethacrylate was used as a flexible co‐monomer. Morphological and mechanical properties of the porous composites with an initial pullulan loading ranging from 1 to 10 wt % have been investigated. Resulting composites were tested in terms of uniaxial compression stress and it was found out that the use of pullulan and flexible co‐monomer in the HIPE preparation increases the compression modulus from 13.53 to 30.8 MPa. Textural analyses of the resulting composites show that in all cases open cellular foams composed of primary cavities (～112–74 μm) connected with secondary interconnected pores were produced with a specific surface area in the range of 1.7–3.0 m² g^?1. In addition, the influence of using porogen in the oil phase was investigated. It was found that using a porogen reduces the cavity size diameter from ～112 to 20 µm and increases the compression modulus from 13.53 to 47.06 MPa. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 55:2636–2642, 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Effect of Shell Coating Techniques on Dynamic Response of Photoconductive Core/Shell Nanorod Arrays

Efficient carrier collection in the core/shell nanowire (nanorod) arrays requires a high quality interface between core and shell materials. A highly conformal shell layer around nanorods can lead to fast dynamic response in photoconductive devices by a radial charge flow. Therefore, choice of the deposition technique for the conformal shell layer becomes crucial. In this study, the dynamic response of indium sulfide (In₂S₃) nanorods/silver (Ag) core/shell devices is compared in which Ag shell layers are deposited by different physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques. In₂S₃ nanorods are fabricated by glancing angle deposition. The core/shell devices with Ag shell sputtered at a relatively high working gas pressure (≈3 × 10⁻² mbar) produce the highest photocurrent compared to other devices in which more directional incident flux (with working gas pressure of ≈3 × 10⁻³ mbar) is utilized for Ag shell layer. The reduced transit times indicate a conformal shell achieved by the high pressure sputtering technique that has a wide angular distribution flux. In addition, a more directional flux yet with a small angle (≈30°) incidence with respect to the substrate surface normal also helps increase the photocurrent. Such simple and scalable PVD techniques are shown to offer alternative fabrication approaches in producing high quality core/shell nanostructures.     

Characterisation of white tea – Comparison to green and black tea

An overview is given on the manufacture of the different types of tea along with the most important phenolics present in tea and methods of analysis. Compositional data are presented for green, white and black teas. A differentiation of green and black tea by using the ratio between total phenolics and sum of the major catechins seems to be feasible. For white tea there is no general accepted definition. Possible approaches are geographic origin, the botanical variety and the manufacture or the appearance. The differentiation between green and white teas by the ratio mentioned above is not possible.     

Energy overview for the sultanate of oman

Since 1967, exporting crude oil has been the leading hard-currency earner for Oman: 9×10⁵ barrels of crude oil per day being extracted in 1997. The total remaining oil reserves, which can be harnessed economically now, amount to approximately 5.2×10⁹ barrels, but this commercially-available resource is expected to be depleted completely by the year 2015. The second most important source of energy in the country is natural gas: present economically-harnessable reserves are approximately 724×10⁹ Nm³. In 1994, the amount extracted was merely 2.4×10⁹ Nm³. This resource is expected to be exhausted by the year 2064. From 1990 to 1995, the Government-run electricity-generation power-capability rose from 1277 to 1642 MW: the peak demand has grown simultaneously by 59%. The total-power generation in 1995 was 6500 GWh, while the annual consumption was 6173 GWh; the domestic sector accounting for approximately 60% of the total consumption. The rate of energy consumption pattern is seasonal in nature, with the mid-summer electric demand being nearly triple that of mid-winter. Private cars accounted for 54% of the total number of vehicles in Oman in 1994, and this number is rising rapidly. The associated freedom of choice to use the private car in order to satisfy the desires for increased mobility and privacy will not be sustainable in the long term.     

Development of a new code family based on SAC-OCDMA system with large cardinality for OCDMA network

We have proposed a new Multi-Diagonal (MD) code for Spectral Amplitude – Coding Optical Code Division Multiple Access (SAC-OCDMA). Although this new MD code has many properties, one of the important properties of this code is that the cross correlation is always zero. Simplicity in code construction and flexibility in cross correlation control has made this code a compelling candidate for future OCDMA applications. The Multiple access interference (MAI) effects have been successfully and completely eliminated. Based on the theoretical analysis MD code is shown here to provide a much better performance compared to Modified Quadratic Congruence (MQC) code and Random Diagonal (RD) code. Proof-of-principle simulations of encoding with 5 and 10 users with 622 Mb/s data transmission at a BER of 10⁻¹² have been successfully demonstrated together with the DIRECT detection scheme.     

Steam Assisted Hybrid Cooking Behavior of Semitendinosus Muscle: Heterocyclic Amines Formation,Soluble Protein Degradation,Fat Retention,Surface Color,and Cooking Value

Beef (Semitendinosus muscle) was cooked in natural convection, forced convection and steam assisted hybrid oven and saturated steam oven at different oven temperatures until the geometric center of samples reached different end temperatures. Heterocyclic amine (HCA) compounds formation, soluble protein degradation kinetics, cook value, changes in fat content, surface colour and overall acceptance of cooked beef were determined. Soluble protein degradation of beef was considered as first order reaction kinetics and the reaction rate constants, k, were determined in the range of 0.014-0.052 min^?1. In steam assisted hybrid oven had higher reaction rate constants compared to that of the convection ovens. The effect of cooking temperature on soluble protein degradation for natural convection, forced convection and steam assisted hybrid oven followed the Arrhenius type of equation with activation energies of 12.45, 14.57 and 60.16 kJ/mol, respectively. Lower HCAs contents, shorter cooking times, lower cook values and lower fat retention were obtained by steam assisted hybrid oven cooking. Steam assisted hybrid cooking could be considered as an alternative cooking method to obtain a healthier product without compromising the eating habits of conventional methods due to better appearance (moderate burned surface) than saturated steam oven samples and a product retaining the most of the nutritional values.     

Chemical synthesis and expression of the HIV-1 Rev protein

The HIV-1 Rev protein is responsible for shuttling partially spliced and unspliced viral mRNA out of the nucleus. This is a crucial step in the HIV-1 lifecycle, thus making Rev an attractive target for the design of anti-HIV drugs. Despite its importance, there is a lack of structural, biophysical, and quantitative information about Rev. This is mainly because of its tendency to undergo self-assembly and aggregation; this makes it very difficult to express and handle. To address this knowledge gap, we have developed two new highly efficient and reproducible methods to prepare Rev in large quantities for biochemical and structural studies: 1) Chemical synthesis by using native chemical ligation coupled with desulfurization. Notably, we have optimized our synthesis to allow for a one-pot approach for the ligation and desulfurization steps; this reduced the number of purification steps and enabled the obtaining of desired protein in excellent yield. Several challenges emerged during the design of this Rev synthesis, such as racemization, reduced solubility, formylation during thioester synthesis, and the necessity for using orthogonal protection during desulfurization; solutions to these problems were found. 2) A new method for expression and purification by using a vector that contained an HLT tag, followed by purification with a Ni column, a cation exchange column, and gel filtration. Both methods yielded highly pure and folded Rev. The CD spectra of the synthetic and recombinant Rev proteins were identical, and consistent with a predominantly helical structure. These advances should facilitate future studies that aim at a better understanding of the structure and function of the protein.