Electrochemical behavior of electrodes comprising micro- and nano-sized particles of LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4: A comparative study

A comparative analysis of the electrochemical behavior and Li⁺ transport characteristics of thin-layer LiNi_0.5Mn_1.5O₄ intercalation electrodes comprised of micro- or nano-sized particles in standard Li salt solutions, was carried out and is reported herein. These electrodes were free of any conductive additives and polymeric binder in order to avoid their complex impact on the electrochemical response of the active mass. It was clearly established that the electrodes prepared from nanoparticles of the active mass show faster kinetics and a more reversible electrochemical behavior compared to the electrodes comprising microparticles.

The response of the nanoparticles to electrochemical techniques such as linear sweep voltammetry and potentiostatic intermittent titration (PITT) is characterized by high resolution. Thus D versus E could be calculated very precisely. It was encouraging to realize the good performance of the electrodes comprising nano-LiMn_1.5Ni_0.5O₄, in spite of their high surface area and their high operating voltage.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Lesquerella fendleri</Emphasis> protein fractionation and characterization

Lesquerella fendleri is a promising new crop whose seed contains hydroxy FATG with potential industrial uses as well as substantial amounts of valuable gums. The defatted L. fendleri seeds also contain more than 30% protein. The objective of this study is to process and characterize this protein component for possible future uses in food. Hexane-defatted seed has more than 30% protein content. Defatted lesquerella meal was extracted sequentially with 0.5 M sodium chloride (2×), water, 70% ethanol, and 0.1 N sodium hydroxide (2×). Each sodium chloride extract was dialyzed against deionized water and centrifuged to separate the water-soluble fraction (albumin) from the salt-soluble fraction (globulin) before freeze-drying. The ethanol extract and the neutralized sodium hydroxide extracts (glutelin) were dialyzed against water and freeze-dried. Albumin had the highest proportion of lysine and sulfur amino acids per 16 g nitrogen among all the fractions analyzed. Glutelin and globulin accounted for the highest amount of protein nitrogen. SDS-PAGE of the reduced albumin, globulin, and glutelin showed the presence of several protein bands with M.W. ranging from 7 to 98 kDa. Nitrogen solubility of defatted lesquerella meal from pH 2 to 12 indicated a solubility minimum of 15% around pH 4.2 and a solubility of 75% at pH 11.5. Nonprotein nitrogen of defatted meal was 12% of total nitrogen. Defatted lesquerella meal has the potential for food use based on good nitrogen solubility and good amino acid composition.     

Trace Machines for Observing Continuous-Time Markov Chains

In this paper, we study several linear-time equivalences (Markovian trace equivalence, failure and ready trace equivalence) for continuous-time Markov chains that refer to the probabilities for timed execution paths. Our focus is on testing scenarios by means of push-button experiments with appropriate trace machines and a discussion of the connections between the equivalences. For Markovian trace equivalence, we provide alternative characterizations, including one that abstracts away from the time instances where actions are observed, but just reports on the average sojourn times in the states. This result is used for a reduction of the question whether two finite-state continuous-time Markov chains are Markovian trace equivalent to the probabilistic trace equivalence problem for discrete-time Markov chains (and the latter is known to be solvable in polynomial time).     

Diamond polycrystalline composite material with dispersion-hardened nickel-based additive

A diamond polycrystalline composite material with improved physico-mechanical characteristics has been obtained at high pressure and temperature using nickel and cobalt powders and tungsten carbide nanopowder as sintering aids. Samples of this material reinforced with CVD polycrystalline diamond at high pressure and temperature have been manufactured.     

Field-Induced Gap in the Spin-1/2 Heisenberg Chain Compound Cu-Pyrimidine Dinitrate: ESR Studies in Magnetic Fields up to 63 T

Results of electron spin resonance studies of copper pyrimidine dinitrate (Cu-PM, [PM-Cu(NO₃)₂(H₂O)₂] _n , PM = pyrimidine), a spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic chain material with alternating g-tensor and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions, in pulsed magnetic fields up to 63 T are reported. The field-induced gap shows a non-monotonic behavior with a minimum in the vicinity of the saturation field H _sat =48.5 T. This is associated with a transition from the sine-Gordon region to a spin-polarized state with magnon excitations. By comparing the entire set of experimental data with results of density matrix renormalization group calculations for Cu-PM, the validity of the used theoretical approach is proven.     

Efficient deadlock analysis of component-based software architectures

Component-based development (CBD) is a promising approach to master the design complexity of huge software products. In addition, knowledge about the architecture of such component systems can help in establishing important system properties, which in general is computationally hard because of the state space explosion problem. Extending previous work, we here investigate the novel class of disjoint circular wait free component systems and show how we can use the architectural information to establish a condition for the property of deadlock-freedom in polynomial time. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of this class by showing how to transform an arbitrary system into a disjoint circular wait free one in linear time and in a property preserving way and by providing various computational complexity results. A running example is included. We use the framework of interaction systems, but our results carry over to other CBD models.