Von der Schadstoffquelle zur Schadstoffsenke – neue Konzepte der Müllverbrennung

From pollutant source to pollutant sink – Novel concepts of solid incineration. Until a few years ago, solid waste incineration plants were considered to be major sources of pollutant emission. Meanwhile, by enhancing the effectiveness of combustion and by integration of modern flue gas cleaning techniques, solid waste incineration now leads with regard to emission reducing engineering measures. Harmful effects on the environment no longer originate in the stacks of these plants. Recently, pollutants enriched in flue gas cleaning products have caused disposal problems. These problems can be solved by concentrating the harmful inorganic constituents, above all mercury and cadmium, to a still higher level through wet chemical extraction and removal of the resulting concentrate from the process. Organic pollutants can be conveniently destroyed by thermal treatment. Despite all the objections there are good chances of using solid waste incineration as a pollutant sink and hence as a tool helping to protect our environment.     

The effect of hydrogen peroxide on serum lecithin-cholesterol acytransferase activity

Glomset has reported an acyltransferase in plasma which effects the transfer of a fatty acid from the beta position of lecithin to cholesterol, forming cholesteryl esters. Peroxide is shown to have an inhibitory effect on the enzyme activity in a concentration of 0.1 M. There is a variable effect with a concentration of 0.01 M, with a stimulation of activity in some sera, while in others an inhibition. The addition of a synthetic saturated lecithin does not cause a reversal of the inhibition at 0.1 M H₂O₂. Presented at the Aerospace Medical Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, May 1969.     

Contribution to solving the problem of dioxins generated during waste incineration

The production of dioxins/furans during waste incineration, and particularly the development of measures for minimizing the amount of generated pollutants, continue to command a considerable scientific as well public interest. Experiments are reported which were performed at the TAMARA municipal solid waste pilot incineration, erected on the premises of the karlsruhe Nuclear Research Centre. These experiments show that the solid waste mass flow rate and moisture content influence the dioxin/furan formation, Good removal efficiencies of dioxins/furans have been In wet cleaning. Hydrogen peroxide added to the crude gas is an interesting “killer” reagent for dioxins/furans.     

Anisotropy pinning of domain walls in a soft amorphous magnetic material

Ribbons were annealed in the demagnetized state with one wall along the ribbon middle. This wall becomes pinned during the heat treatment. Reentrant reversal occurs when reverse domains are nucleated at the ribbon edge with a threshold field larger than the demagnetizing field; this wall does not annihilate when it meets the pinned wall but leaves a line of reverse domains stabilized by ripple in the anisotropy. These domains permit a regular smooth reversal for the demagnetization process until the ribbon returns to the pinned configuration. The regular loop appears when the ribbon has been completely saturated by a large field. Mobile walls are nucleated on both sides of the pinned wall so that the ribbon does not return to the pinned configuration. Reversal now follows the usual demagnetization curve over the entire cycle. Kerr magnetooptical domain and domain wall observations are used in this investigation. All of the possible wall structures predicted by the model of asymmetric flux closed Bloch walls were identified.<>     

Near-field photochemical imaging of noble metal nanostructures

The sub-diffraction imaging of the optical near-field in nanostructures, based on a photochemical technique, is reported. A photosensitive azobenzene-dye polymer is spin coated onto lithographic structures and is subsequently irradiated with laser light. Photoinduced mass transport creates topographic modifications at the polymer film surface that are then measured with atomic force microscopy (AFM). The AFM images correlate with rigorous theoretical calculations of the near-field intensities for a range of different nanostructures and illumination polarizations. This approach is a first step toward additional methods for resolving confined optical near fields, which can augment scanning probe methodologies for high spatial resolution of optical near fields.     

A hierarchical statistical modeling approach for the unsupervised 3-D biplanar reconstruction of the scoliotic spine

This paper presents a new and accurate three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction technique for the scoliotic spine from a pair of planar and conventional (postero-anterior with normal incidence and lateral) calibrated radiographic images. The proposed model uses a priori hierarchical global knowledge, both on the geometric structure of the whole spine and of each vertebra. More precisely, it relies on the specification of two 3-D statistical templates. The first, a rough geometric template on which rigid admissible deformations are defined, is used to ensure a crude registration of the whole spine. An accurate 3-D reconstruction is then performed for each vertebra by a second template on which nonlinear admissible global, as well as local deformations, are defined. Global deformations are modeled using a statistical modal analysis of the pathological deformations observed on a representative scoliotic vertebra population. Local deformations are represented by a first-order Markov process. This unsupervised coarse-to-fine 3-D reconstruction procedure leads to two separate minimization procedures efficiently solved in our application with evolutionary stochastic optimization algorithms. In this context, we compare the results obtained with a classical genetic algorithm (GA) and a recent Exploration Selection (ES) technique. This latter optimization method with the proposed 3-D reconstruction model, is tested on several pairs of biplanar radiographic images with scoliotic deformities. The experiments reported in this paper demonstrate that the discussed method is comparable in terms of accuracy with the classical computed-tomography-scan technique while being unsupervised and while requiring only two radiographic images and a lower amount of radiation for the patient.     

Objective measurement of tactile mislocalization

Stimulating the skin with intensities close to the sensory threshold causes erroneous localization of the site of stimulation. Previous studies using manual methods for applying faint tactile stimuli have shown that localization errors obey a somatotopic principle in which tactile stimuli are preferentially mislocalized to sites adjacent to the stimulated skin region. However, manual testing of mislocalization is time consuming and only partially objective because results depend on the skills of the tester. To improve the testing procedure, an automated apparatus was developed. The procedure adjusted stimulus intensity adaptively during testing to remain near the individual subject's sensory threshold, so that mislocalizations occurred often enough to assess somatotopic organization. The new method was applied to 12 healthy subjects. In each subject, the five digits of the right hand were stimulated singly in random order. Localization errors were distributed preferentially to fingers close to the stimulated finger rather than to distant fingers. The profile of mislocalization differed significantly from that expected on the basis of response bias or guessing behavior. The present results replicate previous findings obtained for manual testing with improved sensitivity and indicate that the new technique is a useful tool for the study of somatosensory processing on a perceptual level.