Future increase in harmful algal blooms in the North Sea due to climate change.

In temperate seas such as the North Sea harmful (toxic) algal blooms will probably increase as a result of climate change. This conclusion was reached after investigating the projected effect of climate change for the year 2100 in Dutch coastal waters (4 degrees C temperature rise and increased water column stratification) on the growth rates of six harmful and two non-harmful phytoplankton species. Micro algae form the basis of the marine food chain. However, toxin-producing species may seriously disrupt the food web and lead to fish kills and human intoxication. Two species with estimated doubled growth rates in 2100, F. japonica and C. antiqua, entered Europe via ship's ballast water or shellfish imports. This stresses the need to legally regulate such invasion routes in order to prevent the import of novel species. Future toxic phytoplankton blooms may further devaluate ecosystem deliverables such as fish production or recreational use. This devaluation can be estimated by monetary value assessments that are needed in cost-benefit analyses for policy guidance. The lack of understanding of future climate, ecosystem functioning and its response to climate change calls for a scientific effort to improve our knowledge on present day coastal ecosystem functioning and its resilience.     

Fuzzy Learning of Talbot Effect Guides Optimal Mask Design for Proximity Field Nanopatterning Lithography

Processing methods used in photonics and nanotechnology possess many limitations restricting their application areas such as high cost, inability to produce fine details, problems with scalability, and long processing time. Proximity field nanopatterning is a lithography method which surpasses these limitations. By using interference patterns produced by a two-dimensional phase mask, the technique is able to generate a submicron detailed exposure on a millimeter-size slab of light sensitive photopolymer, which is then developed like a photographic plate to reveal three-dimensional interference patterns from the phase mask. While it is possible to use simulations to obtain the interference patterns produced by a phase mask, realizing the mask dimensions necessary for producing a desired interference pattern is analytically challenging due to the intricacies of light interactions involved in producing the final interference pattern. An alternative method is to iteratively optimize the phase mask until the interference patterns obtained converge to the desired pattern. However, depending on the optimization technique used, one either risks a significant probability of failure or requires a prohibitive number of iterations. We argue that an optimization technique that is to take advantage of the physics of the problem using machine learning methods (here fuzzy learning) can lead to competent mask design. This technique is described in this letter.     

Influence of inhibitor addition on the corrosion protection performance of sol–gel coatings on AA2024

Sol–gel films are actively investigated during the last decade as possible candidates for environmentally friendly pre-treatments. However, the important drawback in this case is the lack of active corrosion protection and self-healing ability.     

Addition of pectolytic enzymes: an enological practice which improves the chromaticity and stability of red wines

Summary The effect of the addition of four commercial pectolytic preparations on the visual characteristics (colour and turbidity) of red wines has been evaluated. The effect of both clarifying and colour extracting enzymes and the effect of different doses used, were evaluated and compared. All the red wines treated enzymatically, independent of the type of enzyme and dose, present chromatic characteristics which can be considered better than those of the control wines. Also, those wines treated with enzymes had greater stability during 2 years storage in bottles, in particular the turbidity was better than untreated wines.     

Fractoemission from Lead Zirconate-Titanate

We present measurements of the electron, positive ion, and photon emission accompanying the fracture in vacuum of poly-crystalline 95/5 lead zirconate-titanate. The intensities of the charged-particle components of this fractoemission are shown to depend strongly on the direction (relative to the direction of fracture) and magnitude of polarization. The most intense emission is observed when the fracture surfaces are perpendicular to the polarization direction. The emission intensity increases monotonically with polarization. These results are interpreted in terms of a model involving charge separation on the fracture surfaces leading to a microdischarge during fracture. Implications to the interpretation of triboluminesence effects are discussed.     

Long-term transients in a reactor under forced concentration cycling

In the approach to a cycle-invariant state in the forced feed concentration cycling of the CO oxidation over a NiO catalyst, a very long transient has been observed lasting 80 ks or more. This transient appears to be associated only with CO pretreatment of the catalyst and is not a general phenomenon. The slow convergence to the cycle-invariant state reported in certain modelling calculations in the literature appears to have a different cause.     

Prediction of thermal comfort in a building during a cold spell

The comfort diagrams and the so-called PMV-PPD values are already used today directly and indirectly in a wide field in technical practice, even at a standard level. This theory is known also in Hungary, and the PMV-PPD values have been used by us for the solution of a design problem. The task was to elaborate a calculation method, an index number suitable for the determination of the thermal confort effect in the case of occasional underheating of residential and communal buildings in winter.The results of this work are presented in this paper.     

Nanolayered lightweight flexible shields with multidirectional optical transparency

New nanolayered coatings are designed and deposited on flexible plastic substrate having the thickness of 100 /spl mu/m, in order to realize lightweight ultrathin transparent shielding foils. The structure of the coating is optimized considering three figures of merit: the average transmittance in the visible range for normal incidence, the normalized average transmittance for oblique incidence at 550 nm, and the transmittance quality factor. The nanotechnology exploited for the deposition of the transparent metals is the dual ion beam sputtering. Tests of durability, optical transmission, and shielding effectiveness demonstrate that the film has a high adhesion under mechanical solicitation, high resistance against aging, peak transmittance in the visible range higher than 70%, omnidirectional properties in the range 0/spl deg/-60/spl deg/, and shielding effectiveness of 40 dB up to 6 GHz.