Hydrogenolysis of Hydroxymatairesinol Over Carbon-Supported Palladium Catalysts

The natural lignan hydroxymatairesinol was hydrogenolysed to a potential anticarcinogenic substance matairesinol over different carbon-supported palladium catalysts. The reaction was conducted in 2-propanol at 70 °C under hydrogen flow in a stirred glass reactor. The catalysts were characterised by N₂-physisorption, CO pulse chemisorption and pH measurement of aqueous catalyst slurries. The most active catalyst (Degussa-Hüls) gave yields of matairesinol over 90% in 4 h. It was concluded that the acidity of the catalyst had a profound influence on the reaction rate.     

让错误无可遁形

多年来，很多媒体都报道了工业图像识别系统在不同场合的应用，尤其在与图像密切相关的领域——印刷行业的应用。然而，事实上，工业图像识别系统却始终没有在印刷行业得到普遍应用。     

Maternal care, isolation-induced infant ultrasonic calling, and their relations to adult anxiety-related behavior in the rat.

In the rat, variations in maternal care affect the development of stable individual differences in anxiety-related behavior. Here, it was asked whether such experience-dependent differences can be detected already during early life. As a measure for anxiety in pups, isolation-induced ultrasonic vocalizations were used, and their dependency on different maternal behaviors, namely licking, retrieval behavior, and responsiveness to playback of pup calls, was tested. Consistent with reported differences of adult rats with high or low levels of maternal care experienced, the rarely licked offspring appeared to be more anxious, since they emitted more calls when separated from their mother and litter. Based on these findings, it was examined whether infant calling can be used as a predictor of adult anxiety-related behavior. Results show that infant call emission was negatively correlated with immobility and calling during fear conditioning. These relationships seem to be mediated at least partly by maternal care. In total, measuring ultrasonic vocalizations can provide information about an affective trait of infant and adult rats, which gives the opportunity to study the development of emotionality from early life onward. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigation of High-Velocity Suspension Flame Sprayed (HVSFS) glass coatings

High-Velocity Suspension Flame Spraying (HVSFS) has recently emerged as a potential alternative to conventional HVOF-spraying: employing liquid suspensions instead of dry powder feedstock enables the use of very fine grain-sized particles, resulting in small-sized lamellae. Thin, low-porosity coatings can thus be manufactured. This paper details the first attempt at manufacturing glass coatings using the HVSFS technique: these coatings can have multiple applications (anti-corrosion coatings on metal and ceramic substrates, bio-compatible coatings, etc). A CaO–ZrO₂–SiO₂ glass frit was selected for this attempt. Excellent potentialities emerged (very low porosity), but some problems still existed (big “droplet-like” features on the coating surface), which have recently been largely overcome thanks to process modifications.     

Who invented ray tracing?

We provide some remarks on the very early developments of the visualization techniques conducted during the European Renaissance. It is shown that the basic principle of ray tracing was already presented by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) in 1525. This article is intended to be of common interest; it is not a scientific report.     

Evaluation of specimen preparation techniques for micro-PIXE localisation of elements in hyperaccumulating plants

Hybanthus floribundus subsp. floribundus, a rare Australian Ni-hyperaccumulating shrub and Pityrogramma calomelanos var. austroamericana, an Australian naturalized As-hyperaccumulating fern are promising species for use in phytoremediation of contaminated sites. Micro-proton-induced X-ray emission (μ-PIXE) spectroscopy was used to map the elemental distribution of the accumulated metal(loid)s, Ca and K in leaf or pinnule tissues of the two plant species. Samples were prepared by two contrasting specimen preparation techniques: freeze-substitution in tetrahydrofuran (THF) and freeze-drying. The specimens were analysed to compare the suitability of each technique in preserving (i) the spatial elemental distribution and (ii) the tissue structure of the specimens. Further, the μ-PIXE results were compared with concentration of elements in the bulk tissue obtained by ICP-AES analysis.In H. floribundus subsp. floribundus, μ-PIXE analysis revealed Ni, Ca and K concentrations in freeze-dried leaf tissues were at par with bulk tissue concentrations. Elemental distribution maps illustrated that Ni was preferentially localised in the adaxial epidermal tissues (1% DW) and least concentration was found in spongy mesophyll tissues (0.53% DW). Conversely, elemental distribution maps of THF freeze-substituted tissues indicated significantly lower Ni, Ca and K concentrations than freeze-dried specimens and bulk tissue concentrations. Moreover, Ni concentrations were uniform across the whole specimen and no localisation was observed.In P. calomelanos var. austroamericana freeze-dried pinnule tissues, μ-PIXE revealed statistically similar As, Ca and K concentrations as compared to bulk tissue concentrations. Elemental distribution maps showed that As localisation was relatively uniform across the whole specimen. Once again, THF freeze-substituted tissues revealed a significant loss of As compared to freeze-dried specimens and the concentrations obtained by bulk tissue analysis.The results demonstrate that freeze-drying is a suitable sample preparation technique to study elemental distribution of ions in H. floribundus and P. calomelanos plant tissues using μ-PIXE spectroscopy. Furthermore, cellular structure was preserved in samples prepared using this technique.     

Electricity and water consumption for laundry washing by washing machine worldwide

Washing laundry is one of the most widespread housework in the world. Today, washing machines do this work in many private households, using water, electricity, chemical substances, and process time. Although energy efficiency is in the focus of many regulations which have already achieved significant improvements, the question remains, how relevant these processes are in terms of the absolute impact on resources and whether there are possibilities to improve even further by looking abroad. This survey, which is based on published data, compares the energy and water consumption for automatic laundry washing in an average private household with the total energy and water consumption of private households. Only little data are available on resource consumption for laundry washing and reliable figures based on in-use measurements are hard to obtain. But although some of the data in this report are poor, this is the first work that tries to elucidate the contribution of automatic laundry washing to the total electricity and water consumption of households in selected countries worldwide. The report estimates the resource consumption of roughly 590,000,000 washing machines in 38 countries with about 2.3 billion people, which is about one third of the world population. The results of this work show that laundry washing in private households is done with quite different amounts of electricity and water in different parts of the world both in absolute and relative comparison to the overall household consumption. But due to different consumer habits in dealing with the achieved washing performance in the different global regions, the best practice in washing laundry in a most sustainable way cannot be determined yet. Further research is needed to form a basis for a most sustainable development of resource consumption in private households.     

Universals and cultural differences in the judgments of facial expressions of emotion.

We present here new evidence of cross-cultural agreement in the judgment of facial expression. Subjects in 10 cultures performed a more complex judgment task than has been used in previous cross-cultural studies. Instead of limiting the subjects to selecting only one emotion term for each expression, this task allowed them to indicate that multiple emotions were evident and the intensity of each emotion. Agreement was very high across cultures about which emotion was the most intense. The 10 cultures also agreed about the second most intense emotion signaled by an expression and about the relative intensity among expressions of the same emotion. However, cultural differences were found in judgments of the absolute level of emotional intensity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)