A novel diesel particulate converter

A novel design of an electrochemical reactor for filtering and continuous combustion of soot particles was developed. Such a reactor consists of a porous, oxygen-ion conducting material covered by catalytically active, electron-conductive electrodes, electrical connections and an external power supply. The manufacturing process was developed for high-porosity, ion- and electron-conducting ceramic monoliths from nanosize powders by extrusion followed by coating techniques. The performed catalytic tests proved that the efficiency of the reactor for soot removal is above 90% at low flow conditions (GHSV=13 000⁻¹) and 75% for high flow (GHSV=39 000⁻¹) in the temperature range 250–500 °C.     

Multilabel associative classification categorization of MEDLINE articles into MeSH keywords.

The specific characteristic of classification of medical documents from the MEDLINE database is that each document is assigned to more than one category, which requires a system for multilabel classification. Another major challenge was to develop a scalable method capable of dealing with hundreds of thousand of documents. We proposed a novel system for automated classification of MEDLINE documents to MeSH keywords based on the recently developed data mining algorithm called ACRI, which was modified to accommodate multilabel classification. Five different classification configurations in conjunction with different methods of measuring classification quality were proposed and tested. The extensive experimental comparison showed superiority of methods based on reoccurrence of words in an article over nonrecurrent-based associative classification. The achieved relatively high value of macro F1 (46%) demonstrates the high quality of the proposed system for this challenging dataset. Accuracy of the proposed classifier, defined as the ratio of the sum of TP and TN examples to the total number of examples, reached 90%. Three scenarios were proposed based on the performed tests and different possible objectives. If a goal is to classify the largest number of documents, a configuration that maximizes micro F1 should be chosen. On the other hand, if a system is to work well for categories with a small number of documents, a configuration that maximizes macro F1 is more suitable. A tradeoff can be obtained by using a configuration that optimizes the average between macro and micro F1.     

Stable range enhancement in a symmetric confocal two-rod resonator with 90/spl deg/ optical rotator

We propose a method to eliminate the narrow unstable region of a symmetric two-rod resonator with a 90/spl deg/ optical rotator which is used to compensate for thermal birefringence of the laser rod. The narrow unstable region is caused by the difference between the thermal focal lengths of the radial and tangential directions of a laser rod. Using the g-diagram analysis, we find that the narrow unstable region can be removed in the resonator configuration of a symmetric confocal type. We investigate the effect of the distance between two rods of the proposed resonator on the stability and the beam quality.     

Dielectric Characteristics of UV‐Curable CaCu3Ti4O12 Composite Thick Film Capacitors on Cu Foils

Dielectric composite thick films containing a high dielectric constant CaCu₃Ti₄O₁₂ (CCTO) filler in a UV‐cured polymer matrix were investigated as flexible planar capacitors on Cu foils. Dielectric performance depended on the volume fraction and size of CCTO particles dispersed in the cured polymer matrix. As a result, the thick films containing 33.3 vol.% CCTO with an average particle size of 0.47 μm exhibited a dielectric constant of ~80 and a dielectric loss of ~0.06 at 10 kHz. The effective medium theory model incorporating a morphology fitting parameter has been proven to be most close to the experimental values.     

Pt45Ru45M10/C (M = Fe, Co, and Ni) catalysts for methanol electro-oxidation

Pt₄₅Ru₄₅M₁₀/C (M = Fe, Co, and Ni) catalysts were synthesized and physical and electrochemical properties were analyzed by XRD, TEM, CO stripping and methanol electro-oxidation activity measurement. Among these catalysts, the Pt₄₅Ru₄₅Fe₁₀/C catalyst exhibited the highest mass activity of 2.6 A/g catal. while those of the Pt₄₅Ru₄₅Co₁₀/C and Pt₄₅Ru₄₅Ni₁₀/C catalysts were 2.2 and 2.5 A/g catal., respectively. In the case of specific activity, the catalysts exhibited much higher activities of 110 (130%), 120 (140%) and 150 (170%) mA/m² for the Fe, Co and Ni incorporated catalysts, respectively, than 88 mA/m² of a commercial PtRu/C catalyst.     

LC–MS/MS analysis of phenols for classification of red wine according to geographic origin,grape variety and vintage

A rapid LC–MS/MS method for quantification of phenols and polyphenols in authentic wine samples with unrivalled sensitivity was developed. Excellent limits of detection in the low μg L⁻¹ range were achieved. Reversed phase HPLC employing sub-2 μm particles as stationary phase allowed high-throughput analysis with analysis times of 10 min for 11 compounds. The phenolic pattern was assessed in 97 authentic wine samples (stored under identical conditions without further treatment or modification) comprising eleven geographical Austrian regions, six grape varieties and five vintages. Canonical discriminant analysis was applied to the data set showing the suitability of the (poly)phenolic spectrum for classification of the wine samples. The method allowed a geographic discrimination of several grape varieties and a grape variety based discrimination of four regions. As a novel finding excellent (poly)phenol-based differentiation of the five investigated vintages (2003–2007) was achieved.     

Fast NMR Methods for Measuring in the Direct and/or Competition Mode the Dissociation Constants of Chemical Fragments Interacting with a Receptor

Ligand-based NMR screening represents a powerful method in fragment-based drug discovery for the identification of chemical matter interacting with the receptor of interest. The large dynamic range of these methods allows the detection of weakly binding ligands. However, the methodology has not been extensively used for quantifying the strength of these interactions. This knowledge is important for ranking fragments according to their binding strength and for prioritizing structure-based and medicinal chemistry activities. Rapid NMR methods for measuring the dissociation constant in direct and competition modes are presented here. The theory underpinning these methods are presented, along with their application to the measurement of the binding affinities of several ligands of the heat shock protein 90.