Measurement of Aerosol Organic Compounds Using a Novel Collection/Thermal-Desorption PTR-ITMS Instrument

We report the development and characterization of a proton-transfer-reaction ion trap mass spectrometer for the speciated measurement of organic compounds in atmospheric aerosols and show results from its first field deployment. The instrument uses an aerosol collection inlet to accumulate aerosol mass followed by rapid thermal desorption to volatilize the organic compounds for in situ analysis. We have performed laboratory studies to characterize instrument performance and the instrument was deployed aboard a NOAA research vessel during the Texas Air Quality Study 2006/Gulf of Mexico Atmospheric Composition and Climate Study (TexAQS 2006/GoMACCS) in August–September 2006. The laboratory-determined detection limit for glutaric acid in mixed glutaric acid/NH ₄ HSO ₄ test aerosols was 0.22 ng collected mass, which corresponds to an estimated detection limit of 12 ng m^?3 for a 10 min sample based on the instrument sample flow rate of 1.8 L min^?1. During TexAQS 2006/GoMACCS, signals well above the detection limit were observed at a number of mass to charge ratios, mostly occurring during an extended period of active pollution photochemistry, but also including detection of possible primary emissions of aerosol-phase pyridine.     

Incineration of diesel particulate matter using induction heating technique

Incineration of diesel particulate matter for the regeneration of a mesh-type particulate-filter is achieved using induction heating technique. Heating of the diesel particulates deposited on the mesh-type particulate-filter at around 600 °C is investigated. In the case of the particulate filter, stainless-steel mesh-type filters are considered and the influence on filtering efficiency, the engine performance due to back-pressure generation is studied. Theoretical estimation shows that induction heating approach for the regeneration via exhaust gas heating requires high power (>3 kW). On the other hand, regeneration of mesh-type particulate-filter using induction heating technique requires a low input power of around 0.5 kW in the off-line condition. The proposed mesh-type particulate-filter allowed a filtration efficiency of around 30–40% at lower engine speeds and part loads. Particulate combustion through induction heating at static condition is studied and power required for mesh-type filter and sintered metal filter regeneration during engine operation is estimated theoretically.     

A calculus for modular loop acceleration and non-termination proofs

Loop acceleration can be used to prove safety, reachability, runtime bounds, and (non-)termination of programs. To this end, a variety of acceleration techniques have been proposed. However, so far all of them have been monolithic, i.e., a single loop could not be accelerated using a combination of several different acceleration techniques. In contrast, we present a calculus that allows for combining acceleration techniques in a modular way and we show how to integrate many existing acceleration techniques into our calculus. Moreover, we propose two novel acceleration techniques that can be incorporated into our calculus seamlessly. Some of these acceleration techniques apply only to non-terminating loops. Thus, combining them with our novel calculus results in a new, modular approach for proving non-termination. An empirical evaluation demonstrates the applicability of our approach, both for loop acceleration and for proving non-termination.

     

Synthesis of 6,6- and 7,7-Difluoro-1-acetamidopyrrolizidines and Their Oxidation Catalyzed by the Nonheme Fe Oxygenase LolO

LolO, a 2-oxoglutarate-dependent nonheme Fe oxygenase, catalyzes both the hydroxylation of 1-exo-acetamidopyrrolizidine (AcAP), a pathway intermediate in the biosynthesis of the loline alkaloids, and the cycloetherification of the resulting alcohol. We have prepared fluorinated AcAP analogues to aid in continued mechanistic investigation of the remarkable LolO-catalyzed cycloetherification step. LolO was able to hydroxylate 6,6-difluoro-AcAP (prepared from N,O-protected 4-oxoproline) and then cycloetherify the resulting alcohol, forming a difluorinated analogue of N-acetylnorloline and providing evidence for a cycloetherification mechanism involving a C(7) radical as opposed to a C(7) carbocation. By contrast, LolO was able to hydroxylate 7,7-difluoro-AcAP (prepared from 3-oxoproline) but failed to cycloetherify it, forming (1R,2R,8S)-7,7-difluoro-2-hydroxy-AcAP as the sole product. The divergent LolO-catalyzed reactions of the difluorinated AcAP analogues provide insight into the LolO cycloetherification mechanism and indicate that the 7,7-difluorinated compound, in particular, may be a useful tool to accumulate and characterize the iron intermediate that initiates the cycloetherification reaction.     

Charge Transportation and Chirality in Liquid Crystalline Helical Network Phases of Achiral BTBT-Derived Polycatenar Molecules

First examples of multichain (polycatenar) compounds, based on the π-conjugated [1]benzothieno[3,2-b]benzothiophene unit are designed, synthesized, and their soft self-assembly and charge carrier mobility are investigated. These compounds, terminated by the new fan-shaped 2-brominated 3,4,5-trialkoxybenzoate moiety, form bicontinuous cubic liquid crystalline (LC) phases with helical network structure over extremely wide temperature ranges (>200 K), including ambient temperature. Compounds with short chains show an achiral cubic phase with the double network, which upon increasing the chain length, is at first replaced by a tetragonal 3D phase and then by a mirror symmetry is broken triple network cubic phase. In the networks, the capability of bypassing defects provides enhanced charge carrier mobility compared to imperfectly aligned columnar phases, and the charge transportation is non-dispersive, as only rarely observed for LC materials. At the transition to a semicrystalline helical network phase, the conductivity is further enhanced by almost one order of magnitude. In addition, a mirror symmetry broken isotropic liquid phase is formed beside the 3D phases, which upon chain elongation is removed and replaced by a hexagonal columnar LC phase.     

A Comprehensive Review of Genetically Engineered Mouse Models for Prader-Willi Syndrome Research

Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a neurogenetic multifactorial disorder caused by the deletion or inactivation of paternally imprinted genes on human chromosome 15q11-q13. The affected homologous locus is on mouse chromosome 7C. The positional conservation and organization of genes including the imprinting pattern between mice and men implies similar physiological functions of this locus. Therefore, considerable efforts to recreate the pathogenesis of PWS have been accomplished in mouse models. We provide a summary of different mouse models that were generated for the analysis of PWS and discuss their impact on our current understanding of corresponding genes, their putative functions and the pathogenesis of PWS. Murine models of PWS unveiled the contribution of each affected gene to this multi-facetted disease, and also enabled the establishment of the minimal critical genomic region (PWScr) responsible for core symptoms, highlighting the importance of non-protein coding genes in the PWS locus. Although the underlying disease-causing mechanisms of PWS remain widely unresolved and existing mouse models do not fully capture the entire spectrum of the human PWS disorder, continuous improvements of genetically engineered mouse models have proven to be very powerful and valuable tools in PWS research.     

Repeated thermo-hydrolytic disintegration of medium density fibreboards (MDF) for the production of new MDF

European Journal of Wood and Wood Products - Medium density fibreboards (MDF) are currently not recycled after service life, but various publications report on recycling by the disintegration of...     

Development of enhanced three-dimensional printed packings for scale-up of distillation columns: A successful case study

This publication presents a general approach for the enhancement of packings regarding scalability, separation efficiency, and fluid dynamic properties using three-dimensional (3D) printing. The methodology is used to develop miniaturized, scalable packings for process development, and scale-up applications. For this purpose, a 3D printable computer-aided design version of the Rombopak 9M industrial packing (RP9M-3D), which is known for its positive scalability properties, was created. An initial characterization by means of computational fluid dynamics simulations and mass transfer measurements reveals positive but also negative design properties. These findings are used to create a more advanced, miniaturized packing structure, the XW-Pak. The evolved structure is compared to the RP9M-3D. The simulation and experimental results show that the enhanced packing, which is still in the early stages of development, exhibits higher separation efficiencies with improved scalability properties at the same void fraction and surface area than the RP9M-3D.     

Analysis of defect mechanisms in nonstoichiometric ceria–zirconia by the microwave cavity perturbation method

In this microwave study, the defect chemistry of ceria–zirconia solid solutions (CZO, Ce_1−yZr_yO_2−δ) was investigated at high temperatures by a resonant microwave method. Specifically, the effects of temperature and Zr content on the dielectric properties and defect chemistry mechanisms in CZO were analyzed. Experiments were performed on a series of different CZO powders (y = 0.2, 0.33, 0.50, 0.67). Measurements at 600°C and different oxygen partial pressures (p_O2 = 10⁻²⁶–0.2 bar) confirm a dominant n-type conduction of small-polarons in CZO due to the preferred formation of oxygen vacancies, which is also supported by a multimodal analysis. Polarization losses were found to be negligible in the GHz range. Furthermore, an increased relative permittivity was observed in CZO, which correlates with the concentration of oxygen vacancies in CZO. Our microwave study is the first to provide a comprehensive data set for the dielectric properties of CZO powder sample in a wide range of different conditions. In addition, the connection of dielectric properties to CZO defect chemistry mechanisms is presented. The results are in good agreement with findings in the literature and may contribute to a better understanding of microwave-based state diagnosis of CZO-based materials, as it discussed for three-way catalysts.     

Markov Chain Mixture Models for Real-Time Direct Illumination

We present a novel technique to efficiently render complex direct illumination in real-time. It is based on a spatio-temporal randomized mixture model of von Mises-Fisher (vMF) distributions in screen space. For every pixel we determine the vMF distribution to sample from using a Markov chain process which is targeted to capture important features of the integrand. By this we avoid the storage overhead of finite-component deterministic mixture models, for which, in addition, determining the optimal component count is challenging. We use stochastic multiple importance sampling (SMIS) to be independent of the equilibrium distribution of our Markov chain process, since it cancels out in the estimator. Further, we use the same sample to advance the Markov chain and to construct the SMIS estimator and local Markov chain state permutations avoid the resulting bias due to dependent sampling. As a consequence we require one ray per sample and pixel only. We evaluate our technique using implementations in a research renderer as well as a classic game engine with highly dynamic content. Our results show that it is efficient and quickly readapts to dynamic conditions. We compare to spatio-temporal resampling (ReSTIR), which can suffer from correlation artifacts due to its non-adapting candidate distributions that can deviate strongly from the integrand. While we focus on direct illumination, our approach is more widely applicable and we exemplarily show the rendering of caustics.