Pyridine-catalyzed depolymerization of cellulose during carbanilation with phenylisocyanate in dimethylsulfoxide

Carbanilation reactions of cellulose samples (bleached cotton linters and Avicel) with phenylisocyanate in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) were carried out at 60°C in the presence of various pyridine derivatives. The molecular weight distributions of the resulting cellulose tricarbanilates (CTCs) were measured by high-performance size exclusion chromatography. When pyridine or its derivatives were included in the reactions, the CTCs had reduced degree of polymerization (DP) values compared to those of CTCs prepared without the additives. The cellulose depolymerization was promoted by pyridines with electron-donating substituents and was not favored by pyridines with electron-withdrawing substituents nor with groups at positions ortho to the pyridine ring nitrogen atom. For the 3-, 4-, and 3,4- substituted pyridines, there was a linear relationship between log (weight-average CTC DP) and the pK_a (in water) of the pyridine derivative. For 2- and 2,6-substituted pyridines, the DP–pK_a relationships were different, probably because of steric effects of the different substituents ortho to the pyridine nitrogen atom. The optimum DMSO : pyridine solvent ratio for cellulose depolymerization during carbanilation in DMSO : pyridine mixtures was 3 : 1. All three components, phenylisocyanate, pyridine or its derivatives, and DMSO, are required for the depolymerization reaction. It is suggested that the depolymerization may be a consequence of cellulose oxidation by DMSO and/or cleavage of glucosidic bonds of partially carbanilated cellulose by reactions promoted by an enhanced solvent effect of DMSO.     

Location of Aluminum in Substituted Calcium Silicate Hydrate (C-S-H) Gels as Determined by 29Si and 27Al NMR and EELS

Solid-state ²⁷Al and ²⁹Si magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy has been combined with electron energy loss spectroscopy carried out in the transmission electron microscope to determine the location of Al substituting in a semicrystalline C-S-H gel present in a hydrated synthetic slag glass. The gel is found to contain mainly pentameric silicate chains in which the central silicon is substituted by aluminum.     

Watershed management in Thailand: concepts,problems and implementation

Problems of water resource management are becoming increasingly severe in most countries of the developing world. Already from early in this century it was recognised, wherever water resource management problems began to manifest themselves, that the most appropriate level upon which to study and confront these problems was the river basin. This paper reviews various approaches that have been taken to river basin management and the way in which these have surfaced from the particular range of problems and the political context from which they emerged. Since the end of the 1970s, the rapid development of Thailand has brought into focus the need for integrated resource management as a basis for overcoming increasingly severe problems of drought and flood. Deforestation is seen as a major cause of these problems and so it is in watershed management that the first initiatives are being taken. The paper describes in some detail the system which has been adopted and finally discusses the political and administrative problems facing implementation of the system. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrated Surface–Subsurface Modeling of Fuxianhu Lake Catchment, Southwest China

This paper describes an integrated surface–subsurface modeling study of the Fuxianhu Lake catchment (southwest China). Pollution threats to this important water resource have led to the need to evaluate transport pathways and the overall water balance of the catchment. Catchment inputs to the lake include river inflows, direct overland flow and groundwater discharge, which are incorporated into a mathematical model of the system. Surface runoff and groundwater recharge are estimated using a parsimonious soil–vegetation modeling approach, while groundwater flow is based on the MODFLOW-2005 code. Overland flow and stream discharge are coupled to the groundwater regime through the soil layer and are routed through the catchment to account for surface water flow pathways. The model is tested using the V-catchment benchmark problem and is compared to existing models to demonstrate accuracy and capability. Application of the model to the Fuxianhu catchment provides for the first-order approximation of the average catchment water balance, which comprises such components as evapotranspiration losses (37% of rainfall), surface runoff to the lake (37% of rainfall), and groundwater discharge to the lake (8% of rainfall), amongst others. The computationally efficient approach to surface–subsurface modeling adopted in this investigation presents as an alternative to more complex methods, and allows for the rapid assessment of flow pathways at the catchment scale. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Role conflict and ambiguity scales: Reality or artifacts?

Discusses 2 arguments against the role conflict and ambiguity scales developed by J. R. Rizzo et al (see record 1971-01407-001). The arguments focus on the positive and negative wording of the scale items and the self- and other-attributions found in the wording of the scale items. These arguments, if substantiated, would suggest modification of the Rizzo et al scales. The present study, with 272 adults, provided evidence that such arguments may not be able to be substantiated and that modification of the scales based on these arguments may not be necessary. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ischemic modulation of vulnerable period and the effects of pharmacological treatment of ischemia-induced arrhythmias: a simulation study

First identified in the 1930s (Ferris et al., 1936 and Wiggers and Wegria, 1939), the concept of vulnerability applies perfectly to biological oscillators. We can safely say that vulnerability is an inherent property of any excitable media. The duration of vulnerable period (VP) (the time interval during which single stimuli can initiate self-sustaining propagation) is sensitive to medium properties and stimulus parameters (stimulus field, timing behind the conditioning wave, and stimulus amplitude). Apart from medium properties and stimulus characteristics, heart vulnerability is affected by any intervention targeting the excitatory and recovery process. Therefore, we can expect that any pathological condition disturbing heart excitation or tissue recovery will most probably alter the duration of VP. In this paper, we shall explore the implications of ischemia and one of the arrhythmia counteracting methods widely used in clinical practice-antiarrhythmic drugs--in changing the boundaries of VP. The Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial (CAST) studies, as well as classification based on functional characteristics, revealed the arrhythmogenic potential of both Class I and Class III agents, but failed to identify the proarrhythmic mechanisms. This study presents results from a mathematical model (Cimponeriu et al., 2001) of the ventricle based on Luo-Rudy cellular formulation Luo and Rudy, 1991) modified for studying the ischemic modulation of VP and the effects of pharmacological treatment of ischemia-induced arrhythmia. Simulations revealed the link between the cellular antiarrhythmic properties and the proarrhythmic effect at the multicellular level in the case of Na+ channel blockade. Na+ channel blockade delayed recovery of cellular excitability, but also introduced a nonuniform dispersion of refractoriness along the cardiac fiber that can serve as a substrate for initiating a new arrhythmia. Our initial analysis proved that fast unbinding rates are essential in reducing the proarrhythmic potential of Class I drugs. However, further investigations led us to believe that binding properties are equally important. An antiarrhythmic drug with high affinity for drug-channel complex formation elicits a higher level of blockade per time unit. Under this light, we hypothesize that even the modern, fast unbinding drugs are not necessarily safe.     

The Role of 3-D Sound in Human Reaction and Performance in Augmented Reality Environments

Three-dimensional sound's effectiveness in virtual reality (VR) environments has been widely studied. However, due to the big differences between VR and augmented reality (AR) systems in registration, calibration, perceptual difference of immersiveness, navigation, and localization, it is important to develop new approaches to seamlessly register virtual 3-D sound in AR environments and conduct studies on 3-D sound's effectiveness in AR context. In this paper, we design two experimental AR environments to study the effectiveness of 3-D sound both quantitatively and qualitatively. Two different tracking methods are applied to retrieve the 3-D position of virtual sound sources in each experiment. We examine the impacts of 3-D sound on improving depth perception and shortening task completion time. We also investigate its impacts on immersive and realistic perception, different spatial objects identification, and subjective feeling of "human presence and collaboration". Our studies show that applying 3-D sound is an effective way to complement visual AR environments. It helps depth perception and task performance, and facilitates collaborations between users. Moreover, it enables a more realistic environment and more immersive feeling of being inside the AR environment by both visual and auditory means. In order to make full use of the intensity cues provided by 3-D sound, a process to scale the intensity difference of 3-D sound at different depths is designed to cater small AR environments. The user study results show that the scaled 3-D sound significantly increases the accuracy of depth judgments and shortens the searching task completion time. This method provides a necessary foundation for implementing 3-D sound in small AR environments. Our user study results also show that this process does not degrade the intuitiveness and realism of an augmented audio reality environment     

Recognition is not parsing — SPPF-style parsing from cubic recognisers

In their recogniser forms, the Earley and RIGLR algorithms for testing whether a string can be derived from a grammar are worst-case cubic on general context free grammars (CFG). Earley gave an outline of a method for turning his recognisers into parsers, but it turns out that this method is incorrect. Tomita’s GLR parser returns a shared packed parse forest (SPPF) representation of all derivations of a given string from a given CFG but is worst-case unbounded polynomial order. The parser version of the RIGLR algorithm constructs Tomita-style SPPFs and thus is also worst-case unbounded polynomial order. We have given a modified worst-case cubic GLR algorithm, that, for any string and any CFG, returns a binarised SPPF representation of all possible derivations of a given string. In this paper we apply similar techniques to develop worst-case cubic Earley and RIGLR parsing algorithms.