Co-Magneli phases electrocatalysts for hydrogen/oxygen evolution

The subject of this work is the use of non-stoichiometric titanium oxides – Magneli phases as support material of Co-based electrocatalysts aimed for hydrogen/oxygen evolution reaction. Commercial micro-scaled Ebonex (Altraverda, UK) was mechanically treated for 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 h and further Co metallic phase was grafted by sol-gel method. Morphology of Co/Ebonex electrocatalysts was observed by means of TEM and SEM microscopy, while electrochemical behavior by means of cyclic voltammetry and steady-state galvanostatic method.     

An examination of the mechanisms for stable foam formation in activated sludge systems

Screening pure cultures of 65 mycolic acid producing bacteria (Mycolata) isolated mainly from activated sludge with a laboratory based foaming test revealed that not all foamed under the conditions used. However, for most, the data were generally consistent with the flotation theory as an explanation for foaming. Thus a stable foam required three components, air bubbles, surfactants and hydrophobic cells. With non-hydrophobic cells, an unstable foam was generated, and in the absence of surfactants, cells formed a greasy surface scum. Addition of surfactant converted a scumming population into one forming a stable foam. The ability to generate a foam depended on a threshold cell number, which varied between individual isolates and reduced markedly in the presence of surfactant. Consequently, the concept of a universal threshold applicable to all foaming Mycolata is not supported by these data. The role of surfactants in foaming is poorly understood, but evidence is presented for the first time that surfactin synthesised by Bacillus subtilis may be important.     

Some engineering properties of limestone: Tunnel Stra?ina case study (Croatia)

The paper presents geological and engineering geological characteristics of the Stra?ina Tunnel along the Bisko-Šestanovac section of the Zagreb-Split-Dubrovnik highway in Croatia. This paper compares the actual conditions of the rock mass during the excavation with a prediction model that preceded the excavation. From the engineering-geological viewpoint the rock mass in the tunnel was of a significantly higher quality than the prediction model. The specific geological feature of the Stra?ina Tunnel, with its right and left tunnel tube, is the passage of the right tunnel tube through a transgressive contact between Upper Cretaceous rudist limestones and Eocene foraminiferal limestones. Since this is the only tunnel in Croatia excavated through this particular transgressive contact, the geological and engineering properties of the transgression zone were up to now only assumed. Therefore, additional mineralogical, petrographical and engineering geological observations were carried out in order to determine and describe the transgression zone. The results are presented in this paper. In the left tunnel tube the contact between the mentioned litostratigraphical Units is of the fault type. This paper also briefly deals with the significance and cause of the overprofile excavation during tunneling through strongly karstified carbonate rocks. Consequently, special attention was paid to the overprofile during excavation since it can significantly affect tunneling costs.     

A propositional probabilistic logic with discrete linear time for reasoning about evidence

The aim of the paper is to present a sound, strongly complete and decidable probabilistic temporal logic that can model reasoning about evidence. The formal system developed here is actually a solution of a problem proposed by Halpern and Pucella (J Artif Intell Res 26:1–34, 2006).     

An adaptive partitioning approach for mining discriminant regions in 3D image data

Mining discriminative spatial patterns in image data is an emerging subject of interest in medical imaging, meteorology, engineering, biology, and other fields. In this paper, we propose a novel approach for detecting spatial regions that are highly discriminative among different classes of three dimensional (3D) image data. The main idea of our approach is to treat the initial 3D image as a hyper-rectangle and search for discriminative regions by adaptively partitioning the space into progressively smaller hyper-rectangles (sub-regions). We use statistical information about each hyper-rectangle to guide the selectivity of the partitioning. A hyper-rectangle is partitioned only if its attribute cannot adequately discriminate among the distinct labeled classes, and it is sufficiently large for further splitting. To evaluate the discriminative power of the attributes corresponding to the detected regions, we performed classification experiments on artificial and real datasets. Our results show that the proposed method outperforms major competitors, achieving 30% and 15% better classification accuracy on synthetic and real data respectively while reducing by two orders of magnitude the number of statistical tests required by voxel-based approaches.     

Hygienic support of parameters of the technological process of producing new canned children's and dietetic food]

Some technological methods employed in the production of new canned foods prepared with chicken meat and intended for 5-7 month old infants were investigated. Biological experiments established the limits for the thermal optimum of sterilization within the range of 125-130 degrees for the new canned goods of the type "Kroshka". Furthermore, the most marked loss of the proteinic value of the canned goods with the use of modified starches--the jellyfying potato and the corn phosphatethan by employing native starches as a structural stabilizer, was ascertained. The need for hygienic evaluation of the technological methods in developing new baby and dietic foods is stressed.     

A CALCULATION METHOD OF OBTAINING DESORPTION ISOTHERMS OF BEECH (FAGUSMOESL4CA) WOOD

This paper presents the specific methods to obtain sorption isotherms. Sorption isotherms were first obtained experimentally for 20°C and 100°C and then, by using the presented method, isotherms were also obtained for 50°C and 80°C. The same treatment can be applied in finding any isotherm sorption in the temperature range between 20°Cand 100°C.

The experiments were carried out on beech (Fagus moesiaca) and sample dimensions were 3×3×3cm. Based on the results of the experiment, by regression analysis, the most suitable analytic formula was proposed. It relsites temperature and air humidity with the equilibrium moisture content in wood. Experimental results were compared with psychrometric tables and Bramhall's formula for desorption curves with good agreement. This proves that the method presented in this paper is precise and efficient to decrease the lime needed to obtain sorption isotherms experimentally.     

The role of emotional-volitional traits in patients with ischemic heart disease in carrying out dietetic recommendations during long-term clinical observation

The influence of subjective (individual) prerequisites on the possibility of long-term following anti-atherosclerotic diets by coronary patients was investigated. Basing on the examination of the patients they were divided into three groups: those who strictly kept the diet (I), patients who moderately violated the diet (II), and those who did not keep the diet at home (III). Specific psychological methods used in the study allowed differentiation of these groups of patients. A conclusion has been made on the relation between the capacity for keeping the diet and some psychological personality traits of coronary patients. The analysis of the results enabled the authors to reveal a complex of problems for prognosing the coronary patients' readiness to keep the diet at home. The data obtained may be conductive to a rise in the medicosocial adaptation of coronary patients to long-term diet therapy by means of directed psychotherapy.