Effect of Water Vapor on the Release of Fission Gases from Uranium Oxycarbide in High-Temperature, Gas-Cooled Reactor Coated Fuel Particles

The hydrolysis of uranium oxycarbide (UCO) was studied by injecting water vapor into a fuel element containing a known number of high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) coated particles with exposed fuel kernels. The experiments were conducted in the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) at temperatures between 700° and 1000°C, a system pressure of 200 kPa, and partial pressures of water vapor between 21 and 199 Pa. The general sequential response of the exposed fuel kernels to water vapor addition consisted of (1) a rapid release of stored fission gas with a concomitant increase in the steady-state release and (2) a period of constant steady-state release. Upon cessation of the addition of water vapor, a decline in the release to prehydrolysis values generally occurred. The release of stored fission gas was dependent on the square of the partial pressure of water vapor. The ratio of the constant steady-state release to the prehydrolysis value was independent of the partial pressure of water vapor. The time constant for the decline in the release was the same in all of the hydrolysis tests.     

Self-assembly and crystallization behavior of a double-crystalline polyethylene-block-poly(ethylene oxide) diblock copolymer

The self-assembly and crystallization behavior of a well-defined low molecular weight polyethylene-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PE-b-PEO) diblock copolymer was studied. The number-average degrees of polymerization for the PE and PEO blocks were 29 and 20, respectively. The molecular weight distribution was 1.04 as determined by size-exclusion chromatography. The PE-b-PEO sample exhibited two melting points at 28.7 and 97.4 °C for the PEO and the PE crystals, respectively. The crystallization of the PE blocks was unconfined, while the crystallization of the PEO blocks was confined between pre-existing PE crystalline lamellae, as demonstrated by simultaneous small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WAXD) studies. In the fully crystalline state, both PE and PEO blocks formed extended-chain crystals with PE chains tilted ∼22° from the lamellar normal and PEO chains parallel to the lamellar normal, as evidenced by two-dimensional WAXD study of shear-oriented samples. Regardless of hydrogen bonding among hydroxyl chain ends in the PEO blocks, interdigitated, single-crystalline layer morphology was observed for both PE and PEO crystals. The partial crystalline morphology, where the PE crystallizes and the PEO is amorphous, had the same overall d-spacing as the fully crystalline morphology. A double-amorphous PEO layer sandwiched between neighboring PE crystalline layers was deduced based on a chain conformation study using Fourier transform infrared. The confined crystallization kinetics for PEO blocks was investigated by differential scanning calorimetry, which could be explained by a heterogeneous nucleation mechanism. The slower crystallization rate in the PEO-block than the same molecular weight homopolymer was attributed to the effects of nanoconfinement and PEO chains tethered to the PE crystals.     

Antimicrobial activity of statistical polymethacrylic sulfopropylbetaines against gram‐positive and gram‐negative bacteria

A series of statistical copolymers derived from 2‐(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate with four different hydrophobic comonomers (ethyl, butyl, cyclohexyl, and octyl methacrylates) have been prepared via conventional free radical copolymerization under bulk conditions. The copolymers have been subsequently modified, with 1,3‐propanesultone to yield the corresponding polysulfoproylbetaine derivatives. Those copolymers exhibiting the requisite aqueous solubility have been screened with respect to their antimicrobial activity against two common and notorious pathogens, namely Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli). We show that certain copolymers do indeed exhibit antimicrobial activity. The extent of activity is related to the molecular characteristics of the materials such as the molar composition and structure of the hydrophobic comonomer. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 1036–1041, 2006     

SIMULATION OF COUNTER-DIFFUSIONAL MASS TRANSFER

The mathematical formulation of mass transfer in food processes is often based on the diffusion equation with the diffusion coeffcients considered as effective parameters. In some cases, more than one specie can be simultaneously diffusing in opposite directions. Therefore, the movement of one component could affect the movement of the remaining components. The aim of this work is to describe a mathematical procedure to obtain the diffusion coeffcients of different species that simultaneously diffuse in such a situation that each mass flux is affected by the existence of the others. The correspondent microscopic mass balances combined with Fick's law were simultaneously solved using a numerical finite difference method.     

Morphological, mechanical and gas-transport characteristics of crosslinked poly(propylene glycol): homopolymers, nanocomposites and blends

Linear polyethers possess unusually high CO₂ solubility and, hence, selectivity due to the presence of accessible ether linkages that can interact with the quadrupolar moment of CO₂ molecules. In this work, membranes derived from crosslinked poly(propylene glycol) diacrylate (PPGda) oligomers differing in molecular weight (M), as well as PPGda nanocomposites containing either an organically-modified montmorillonite clay or a methacrylate-terminated fumed silica are investigated and compared with highly CO₂-selective poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGda) homopolymer and nanocomposite membranes previously reported. The rheological and permeation properties of PPGda depend sensitively on M, with the elastic modulus decreasing, but CO₂ permeability and CO₂/H₂ selectivity increasing, with increasing M. Incorporation of either nanofiller into PPGda enhances the elastic modulus and reduces the gas permeability in the resultant nanocomposites without strongly affecting CO₂/H₂ selectivity. Blending PPGda and PEGda prior to chemical crosslinking yields binary membranes that exhibit intermediate gas-transport properties accurately described by a linear rule of mixtures.     

Playing Mastermind with Constant-Size Memory

We analyze the classic board game of Mastermind with n holes and a constant number of colors. The classic result of Chvátal (Combinatorica 3:325–329, 1983) states that the codebreaker can find the secret code with Θ(n/logn) questions. We show that this bound remains valid if the codebreaker may only store a constant number of guesses and answers. In addition to an intrinsic interest in this question, our result also disproves a conjecture of Droste, Jansen, and Wegener (Theory Comput. Syst. 39:525–544, 2006) on the memory-restricted black-box complexity of the OneMax function class.     

A conformance test suite for TTCN-3 tools

With more than 10 years of maturing through industrial use and standardization, the Testing and Test Control Notation (TTCN-3) has become a widely used technology that many businesses depend upon for ensuring their product quality. With the rising number of supporters and tools, the demand for a means to assess the standards compliance of TTCN-3 tools has increased. In this article, we describe the motivation, approach, methodology, and results of the still ongoing project to develop a standardized conformance test suite for TTCN-3 tools. We discuss the challenges involved in creating such a test suite, the way to deal with imposed resource limitations of the project, and where we think the effort is heading.     

On detecting co-resident cloud instances using network flow watermarking techniques

Virtualization is the cornerstone of the developing third-party compute industry, allowing cloud providers to instantiate multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single set of physical resources. Customers utilize cloud resources alongside unknown and untrusted parties, creating the co-resident threat—unless perfect isolation is provided by the virtual hypervisor, there exists the possibility for unauthorized access to sensitive customer information through the exploitation of covert side channels. This paper presents co-resident watermarking, a traffic analysis attack that allows a malicious co-resident VM to inject a watermark signature into the network flow of a target instance. This watermark can be used to exfiltrate and broadcast co-residency data from the physical machine, compromising isolation without reliance on internal side channels. As a result, our approach is difficult to defend against without costly underutilization of the physical machine. We evaluate co-resident watermarkingunder a large variety of conditions, system loads and hardware configurations, from a local laboratory environment to production cloud environments (Futuregrid and the University of Oregon’s ACISS). We demonstrate the ability to initiate a covert channel of 4 bits per second, and we can confirm co-residency with a target VM instance in $<$ 10 s. We also show that passive load measurement of the target and subsequent behavior profiling is possible with this attack. We go on to consider the detectability of co-resident watermarking, extending our scheme to create a subtler watermarking attack by imitating legitimate cloud customer behavior. Our investigation demonstrates the need for the careful design of hardware to be used in the cloud.     

Vapor-liquid equilibria in the argon-methane system

Vapor-liquid equilibrium compositions have been measured for the argon-methane system at 115.2°, 123.4° and 137.1°K, by means of a forced-recirculation apparatus. A modified Redlich-Kwong equation of state with the incorporation of a binary interaction constant has been successfully employed to represent the data. Liquid activity coefficients have been evaluated and correlated.     

Empirical equations for the thermodynamic properties of aqueous sodium chloride

Equations for the thermodynamic properties of aqueous sodium chloride near its vapour pressure are presented. The equations are functions of temperature and concentration, and may be used to estimate aqueous sodium chloride's solubility, density, vapour pressure, specific enthalpy and entropy. They are valid for temperatures from 0 to 300°C, and concentrations extending to saturation with suitable accuracy. The thermodynamic equations are represented graphically and compared with published experimental data. These equations should prove to be a useful tool for modeling desalination equipment, particularly distillation processes.