Unsaponified and unsaponifiable determinations as applied to incompletely saponified soaps

Unsaponified and unsaponifiable determinations were made on toilet bar soap, potash vegetable oil paste soap, yellow laundry soap and hardwater cocoa bar soap according to the method of (1) the American Oil Chemists’ Society, and (2) the Society of Public Analysts (British). The results obtained by the two methods were comparable for toilet bar soap, potash vegetable oil paste soap and yellow laundry soap. The unsaponifiable matter in hardwater cocoa bar soap, however, appeared considerably lower when determined by the A. O. C. S. method than when determined by the S. P. A. method. Extraction of unsaponified matter in the former method is by petroleum ether; in the latter method by ethyl ether. In order to determine whether the difference in results could be traced to the difference in solvents, extraction with petroleum ether in the A. O. C. S. method was followed by extraction with ethyl ether. The weight of unsaponified matter (50 gram sample) was increased thereby from 0.791 g. to 1.423 g. The saponification value of the ethyl ether extract under the A. O. C. S. method tended to show that practically all of the additional material extracted with ethyl ether was made up of mono and diglycerides with the mono predominating.     

On the Spectral Efficiency of Energy Constrained Short-Range Communicating Systems

Binary offset carrier modulation is applied in several signals of the global navigation satellite system (GNSS). It enhanced the robustness of GNSS against the impact of multipath and make the compatibility of GNSS better. However, it has the main drawback of potentially giving biased measurements in acquisition and tracking. The technique we proposed is based on linear fitting with multi-correlator to accomplish unambiguous tracking. The coefficient of each correlator was deduced in this paper. The theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that the proposed method can performs well on multipath and thermal noise.     

Studying the conversion of graphite into nanographene sheets using supercritical phase exfoliation method

Abstract

This work studies the application of supercritical-phase exfoliation method to produce 100% yield of high-quality graphene. This simple and cost-effective method utilizes supercritical carbon dioxide and ultrasonication to produce pure and defect-free mono-, few- and multi-layer graphene sheets. The process parameters such as pressure, sonication time, sonication amplitude and the amount of starting graphite were examined. The production of defect-free single-, few- and multi-layer graphene sheets was confirmed using atomic force microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy confirms that our method does not cause any oxidation to the synthesized graphene. The conductivity of the best yield graphene sample has been tested by four-point probe method and high electrical conductivity of 8.5?×?10⁴ S/m was recorded. The synthesized graphene can be used in many applications such as supercapacitors, batteries, composites and conductive inks.     

Multiple-source, multiple-frequency error of an electric field meter

Electric field meters (EFM's) are typically calibrated using single-frequency, single-source standard fields. The response to multiple sources or nonsinusoidal time dependence may be different, however. Possible errors in a multiple-source, multiple-frequency environment are analyzed for an EFM consisting of an electrically short dipole antenna with a diode load and a radio-frequency (RF) filter transmission line. Also considered are errors in the assumption of equal electric and magnetic energy densities in a multiple plane-wave environment. Typical errors of field-intensity measurements are about one to 3 dB, but in some circumstances they can exceed 10 dB.     

Catalogue of electromagnetic environment measurements, 30-300 Hz

The IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society's Technical Committee on Electromagnetic Environments (TC-3) has undertaken a long-term project to compile an inventory or catalogue of published measurements of electromagnetic environments. The frequency spectrum has been divided into tractable bands which will be considered one at a time. We have now completed the 30-300 Hz band. This paper presents the resulting bibliography, along with a brief overview of what has been measured     

Are Two Better Than One? A Comparison Between Single- and Dual-Monitor Work Stations in Productivity and User’s Windows Management Style

Multiple monitors are commonly used in the workplace nowadays. This study compares user productivity and windows management style (WMS) on single- and dual-monitor work stations for engineering tasks of three complexity levels. Four productivity measures including task time, cursor movement, the number of window switches, and the number of mouse clicks were compared. The results showed that dual-monitor setting resulted in significantly less window switches and mouse clicks. Most users preferred dual-monitor setting. To understand how users manage multiple windows in completing their tasks, a new WMS categorization method is proposed, toggler and resizer, and user behavior was categorized into one of these two styles. More users adopted “toggler” style, but as the task complexity level increased, some “toggler” style users switched to “resizer” style.     

Universal mitochondrial PCR combined with species-specific dot-blot assay as a source-tracking method of human, bovine, chicken, ovine, and porcine in fecal-contaminated surface water

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA has the potential to be used as an animal-specific genetic marker for source-tracking of fecal contamination in surface waters and groundwaters. In this report, we describe the development of a method to detect in a single assay human, bovine, ovine, porcine and chicken mitochondrial (mt) DNA in water. Consensus nucleic sequences were found between human, bovine, porcine, ovine and chicken mtDNA to design three sets of PCR universal primers. Upon polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with a digoxigenin-labeled nucleotide and the universal primers, species determination was carried out by dot-blotting membranes containing specific oligonucleotides for these five animals. Our method was carried out with three river samples and three wastewater samples, and the results were compared with those obtained by multiple nested PCR with specific primers for these five species. Our results showed that the dot-blot assays were as specific and sensitive as the nested-PCR approach. The proposed method has the advantage that it requires the use of only one PCR per sample and very little amounts of DNA. Finally, it is an alternative to multiplex PCR approach which is less sensitive, and shows the way for the development of DNA arrays for source-tracking of many more animal species in fecal-contaminated water.     

A Bayesian perspective on stochastic neurocontrol.

Control design for stochastic uncertain nonlinear systems is traditionally based on minimizing the expected value of a suitably chosen loss function. Moreover, most control methods usually assume the certainty equivalence principle to simplify the problem and make it computationally tractable. We offer an improved probabilistic framework which is not constrained by these previous assumptions, and provides a more natural framework for incorporating and dealing with uncertainty. The focus of this paper is on developing this framework to obtain an optimal control law strategy using a fully probabilistic approach for information extraction from process data, which does not require detailed knowledge of system dynamics. Moreover, the proposed control method framework allows handling the problem of input-dependent noise. A basic paradigm is proposed and the resulting algorithm is discussed. The proposed probabilistic control method is for the general nonlinear class of discrete-time systems. It is demonstrated theoretically on the affine class. A nonlinear simulation example is also provided to validate theoretical development.     

Proof Synthesis and Reflection for Linear Arithmetic

This article presents detailed implementations of quantifier elimination for both integer and real linear arithmetic for theorem provers. The underlying algorithms are those by Cooper (for Z) and by Ferrante and Rackoff (for ℝ). Both algorithms are realized in two entirely different ways: once in tactic style, i.e. by a proof-producing functional program, and once by reflection, i.e. by computations inside the logic rather than in the meta-language. Both formalizations are generic because they make only minimal assumptions w.r.t. the underlying logical system and theorem prover. An implementation in Isabelle/HOL shows that the reflective approach is between one and two orders of magnitude faster.