Natural versus accelerated weathering: Understanding water kinetics in bilayer coatings

Exposure to water is a key issue in the performance of multilayer coatings. It may take place in different forms, i.e. as rainfall, dew and humidity variation. Consequently, coatings will experience time-dependent water activity fluctuations. In industrial practice, coatings are subjected to artificial water activity fluctuations in weathering tests. Little is known about the connection between these tests and the reality experience by a coating.     

Change in the Physicochemical Properties of Nanocrystalline Powder Based on ZrO2 in the Presence of a Mineralizing Agent

The change in physicochemical properties of nanocrystalline powder of the composition ZrO₂ ― 3 mole% Y₂O₃ in the presence of aluminum fluoride is studied. The starting powder is prepared by a complex method including elements of hydrothermal synthesis and sol-gel technology. It is established that these conditions expand the temperature limits for the existence of ZrO₂ monoclinic solid solution. Transformation is connected with adsorption of fluorine at the ZrO₂ surface, diffusion in the solid phase, and a reduction in anion vacancy concentration.     

Autophagy-Related Direct Membrane Import from ER/Cytoplasm into the Vacuole or Apoplast: A Hidden Gateway also for Secondary Metabolites and Phytohormones?

Transportation of low molecular weight cargoes into the plant vacuole represents an essential plant cell function. Several lines of evidence indicate that autophagy-related direct endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to vacuole (and also, apoplast) transport plays here a more general role than expected. This route is regulated by autophagy proteins, including recently discovered involvement of the exocyst subcomplex. Traffic from ER into the vacuole bypassing Golgi apparatus (GA) acts not only in stress-related cytoplasm recycling or detoxification, but also in developmentally-regulated biopolymer and secondary metabolite import into the vacuole (or apoplast), exemplified by storage proteins and anthocyanins. We propose that this pathway is relevant also for some phytohormones’ (e.g., auxin, abscisic acid (ABA) and salicylic acid (SA)) degradation. We hypothesize that SA is not only an autophagy inducer, but also a cargo for autophagy-related ER to vacuole membrane container delivery and catabolism. ER membrane localized enzymes will potentially enhance the area of biosynthetic reactive surfaces, and also, abundant ER localized membrane importers (e.g., ABC transporters) will internalize specific molecular species into the autophagosome biogenesis domain of ER. Such active ER domains may create tubular invaginations of tonoplast into the vacuoles as import intermediates. Packaging of cargos into the ER-derived autophagosome-like containers might be an important mechanism of vacuole and exosome biogenesis and cytoplasm protection against toxic metabolites. A new perspective on metabolic transformations intimately linked to membrane trafficking in plants is emerging.     

Distributed phase-shift beamforming power balancing in ad-hoc and sensor networks

Ad-hoc and sensor networks are a well-studied area which gained a lot of attention in the research in the last decades. Two of the problems of battery-powered radio devices are limited transmitter power and finite amount of energy. This paper continues the path opened by the development of a new technology for radio communication which allows cluster communication beyond the horizon of each individual transmitter and the distribution of power need among the modules forming a cluster. This in terms decreases the average power need per device and contributes to a longer lifetime of the entire network.     

On the application of 3D technologies to the framework of cultural heritage

Unrestricted access to both historical and archaeological sites is highly desirable from both a research and a cultural perspective. With the recent developments in 3D scanner technologies and photogrammetric techniques, it is now possible to acquire and create accurate models of such sites. Through the process of virtualisation, numerous 3D collections are created that need to be visualised, indexed and eventually characterized. This paper presents a mobile virtual environment designed for the visualization of photorealistic high-resolution virtualised cultural heritage scenes and artefacts. In addition, it is shown how it is possible to describe and index the texture and the 3D shape of these artefacts with compact support feature vectors. A data mining system, based on these vectors, allows the characterization and the exploration of the 3D collections, through cluster analysis.     

Forming carbonitride coatings on titanium by thermochemical treatment with C-N-O-containing media

The formation of TiC_xN_y coatings on titanium alloys through thermochemical treatment of graphite in nitrogen was investigated in this study. The presence of oxygen in saturating media was found to lower the nitrocarburizing temperature from 1,100°C to 850°C. Two methods to accumulate oxygen in a saturating medium have been proposed: using oxygen-containing nitrogen or oxygensaturated graphite. The sequence of stages of carbonitride formation in the Ti-C-N-O system is explained in this paper.     

Degradation of fullerene C60 by human myeloperoxidase and some reaction products

Abstract

The biodegradation of the fullerene molecule C₆₀ under the action of the human myeloperoxidase enzyme accompanied by a complete loss of the topology of the fullerene core. Analysis of this reaction mixture using UV and FTIR spectroscopy, chromatographic and mass spectrometry methods showed that the degradation proceeds without the formation of significant amounts of hydroxylated compounds. Among other intermediate compounds aromatic compounds were detected.