Rapid Aging as a Key to Understand Deactivation of Ni/Al2O3 Catalysts Applied for the CO2 Methanation

Catalysis Letters - We developed a rapid aging method for Ni/Al2O3 methanation catalysts mimicking the real aging in the actual application. The method is based on hydrothermal deactivation of the...     

Enhancing the quality of financial advice with web 2.0: an approach considering social capital in private asset allocation

Although theoretically necessary, social capital is usually not considered within the process of asset allocation for private investors. Both the lack of appropriate practical valuation concepts and the effort of providing and processing the required information as input for a valuation have been obstacles to properly include social capital in this process. However, first theoretical financial models for the evaluation of social capital have recently become available. Moreover, the fast growth of business community websites and the technological progress in Web 2.0 tools that allow and acquire the active involvement of users, facilitate the provision and processing of valuation-relevant information. In this paper we focus on this second aspect and propose a social software-based concept that allows for an integration of social capital in the asset allocation process.     

Taste perception and purchase intent of oil‐in‐water spreads: effects of oil types and salt (NaCl or KCl) concentrations

Associations of sodium intake with heart‐related problems are creating awareness towards reducing sodium. Potassium chloride (KCl), a substitute for sodium chloride (NaCl), has the disadvantage of imparting bitterness at high concentrations. We evaluated physical characteristics, taste perception and purchase intent of KCl and NaCl in oil‐in‐water spreads/emulsions composed by olive, rice bran and soya bean oils. Consumers (N = 300) evaluated saltiness/bitterness of emulsions prepared with 65% oil, and NaCl (0.5% and 1.0%) or KCl (0.75% and 1.5%). Olive oil spreads (104.07–107.43 Pa s) had higher viscosity compared to other spreads (59.16–74.96 Pa s). Type of oil had significant effects on bitterness, overall taste liking and viscosity. Taste liking decreased due to bitterness of olive oil spreads (mean drop=1.72–2.43). Purchase intent was positively associated with saltiness and pH and increased with oil claims (increase = 1.3%–22.1%) compared to sodium claims (increase = 0.0%–12.9%). These findings are useful for understanding taste perception of emulsions.     

The Kurosawa-Desmedt key encapsulation is not chosen-ciphertext secure

At CRYPTO 2004, Kurosawa and Desmedt presented a new hybrid encryption scheme that is chosen-ciphertext (CCA2) secure in the standard model. Until now it was unknown if the key encapsulation part of the Kurosawa-Desmedt scheme by itself is still CCA2-secure or not. In this note we answer this question to the negative, namely we present a simple CCA2 attack on the Kurosawa-Desmedt key encapsulation mechanism. Our attack further supports the design paradigm of Kurosawa and Desmedt to build CCA2-secure hybrid encryption from weak key encapsulation.     

The roles of altitude and fear in the perception of height.

Previous research on perceiving spatial layout has found that people often exhibit normative biases in their perception of the environment. For instance, slant is typically overestimated and distance is usually underestimated. Surprisingly, however, the perception of height has rarely been studied. The present experiments examined the perception of height when viewed from the top (e.g., looking down) or from the bottom (e.g., looking up). Multiple measures were adapted from previous studies of horizontal extents to assess the perception of height. Across all of the measures, a large, consistent bias was found: Vertical distances were greatly overestimated, especially from the top. Secondary findings suggest that the overestimation of distance and size that occurs when looking down from a high place correlates with reports of trait- and state-level fear of heights, suggesting that height overestimation may be due, in part, to fear. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Megasonic agitation for enhanced electrodeposition of copper

In this paper we propose an agitation method based on megasonic acoustic streaming to overcome the limitations in plating rate and uniformity of the metal deposits during the electroplating process. Megasonic agitation at a frequency of 1 MHz allows the reduction of the thickness of the Nernst diffusion layer to less than 600 nm. Two applications that demonstrate the benefits of megasonic acoustic streaming are presented: the formation of uniform ultra-fine pitch flip-chip bumps and the metallisation of high aspect ratio microvias. For the latter application, a multi-physics based numerical simulation is implemented to describe the hydrodynamics introduced by the acoustic waves as they travel inside the deep microvias.