Diamantartige Kohlenstoffschichten steigern die Effizienz

Diamond‐like carbon thin films enhance efficiency — laser arc deposition of ta‐C Rising prices for fossil fuels as well as the increasing effects of the climate change due to the emission of greenhouse gases reveal the necessity of saving energy. Low friction coatings have an enormous potential in saving energy. Carbon based coatings — named as DLC coatings — are especially well suited for low friction coatings. In particular hydrogen‐free tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta‐C) coatings are of great interest due to their extraordinary low wear properties. In addition they show excellent low friction properties and especially in combination with specific lubricants the so‐called super low friction effect. For the deposition of ta‐C coatings PVD methods have to be applied instead of CVD methods as it is the case for conventional DLC coatings. We have developed a deposition method which is based on a pulsed arc steered by a laser (Laser‐Arc). This allows us to use large cathodes resulting in a high long‐term stability. Furthermore, the carbon plasma source can be combined with a filtering unit removing almost all droplets and particles, which usually are characteristic for an arc process. The resulting Laser‐Arc source allows for the deposition of smooth and virtually defect‐free ta‐C coatings with a competitive deposition rate.     

Iterative absolute electroanalytical approach to characterization of bulk redox conducting systems

A novel electroanalytical approach is proposed here, and it is demonstrated with the direct and simultaneous determination of two unknowns: the concentration of redox sites and the apparent diffusion coefficient for charge propagation in a single crystal of dodecatungstophosphoric acid. This Keggin-type polyoxometalate serves as a model bulk redox conducting inorganic material for solid-state voltammetry. The system has been investigated using an ultramicrodisk working electrode in the absence of external liquid supporting electrolyte. The analytical method requires numerical solution of the combination of two equations in which the first one describes current (or charge) in a well-defined (either spherical or linear) diffusional regime and the second general equation describes chronoamperometric (or normal pulse voltammetric current) under mixed (linear-spherical) conditions. The iterative approach is based on successive approximations through calculation and minimizing the least-squares error function. The method is fairly universal, and in principle, it can be extended to the investigation of other bulk systems including sol-gel processed materials, redox melts, and solutions on condition that they are electroactive and well behaved, they contain redox centers at sufficiently high level, and a number of electrons for the redox reaction considered is known.     

Optimal routing to parallel heterogeneous servers-small arrivalrates

Consider a set of k(⩾2) heterogeneous and exponential servers that operate in parallel. Customers arrive into a single infinite capacity buffer according to a Poisson process, and are routed to available servers in accordance with some routing policy. It is shown that for arrival rates in some possible interval (0,λ₀), ever routing policy which minimizes the long-run expected holding cost is contained in the set of routing policies that minimize the expected flow time for a system with fixed initial population and no new arrivals     

Simple optimization problems via majorization ordering

We introduce and explicitly solve a novel class of optimization problems which are motivated by load assignment issues in crossbar switches with output queueing. The optimization criterion is given in the majorization ordering sense. The solution to these problems indirectly provides solutions to a large class of convex optimization problems under a linear constraint     

K competing queues with geometric service requirements and linear costs: The μc-rule is always optimal

In this note, a discrete-time system of K competing queues with geometric service requirements and arbitrary arrival patterns is studied. When the cost per slot is linear in the queue sizes, it is shown that the μc-rule minimizes the expected discounted cost over the infinite horizon.     

Dirichlet Priors for MAP Inference of Protein Conformation Abundances from SAXS

Estimation of mixture coefficients of protein conformations in solution find applications in understanding protein behavior. We describe a method for maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation of the mixture coefficients of ensemble of conformations in a protein mixture solution using measured small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) intensities. The proposed method builds upon a model for the measurements of crystallographically determined conformations. Assuming that a priori information on the protein mixture is available, and that priori information follows a Dirichlet distribution, we develop a method to estimate the relative abundances with MAP estimator. The Dirichlet distribution depends on concentration parameters which may not be known in practice and thus need to be estimated. To estimate these unknown concentration parameters we developed an expectation-maximization (EM) method. Adenylate kinase (ADK) protein was selected as the test bed due to its known conformations Beckstein et al. (Journal of Molecular Biology, 394(1), 160 1). Known conformations are assumed to form the full vector bases that span the measurement space. In Monte Carlo simulations, mixture coefficient estimation performances of MAP and maximum likelihood (ML) (which assumes a uniform prior on the mixture coefficients) estimators are compared. MAP estimators using known and unknown concentration parameters are also compared in terms of estimation performances. The results show that prior knowledge improves estimation accuracy, but performance is sensitive to perturbations in the Dirichlet distribution’s concentration parameters. Moreover, the estimation method based on EM algorithm shows comparable results to approximately known prior parameters.     

Molecular Heteroconjugation Equilibria in (n-Butylamine + Acetic Acid) Systems in Binary (Dimethyl Sulfoxide + 1,4-Dioxane) Solvent Mixtures

The acidity constants of molecular acid, K _a (HA), cationic acid, K _a (BH⁺), as well as the equilibrium constants of anionic homoconjugation, , cationic homoconjugation, , and molecular heteroconjugation, K_AHB, have been determined in (n-butylamine + acetic acid) systems without proton transfer in binary [dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) + 1,4-dioxane (D)] solvent mixtures. The constants were determined by using the potentiometric titration method at a fixed ionic strength. It is concluded that the molecular heteroconjugation constants in the mixed solvent systems studied are linearly related to the 1,4-dioxane content. Furthermore, in the (acid + base) systems without proton transfer, the direction of titration (direct B + HA or reverse HA + B) has been found to affect the precision of determination of reliable values of molecular heteroconjugation constants. Moreover, it has been found that the relative dielectric constants of the solvent mixtures studied change linearly as a function of solvent composition, as well as solvent components do not show interactions of solvent–solvent type.     

Stem Photosynthesis—A Key Element of Grass Pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) Acclimatisation to Salinity

Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus) is a leguminous plant of outstanding tolerance to abiotic stress. The aim of the presented study was to describe the mechanism of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) photosynthetic apparatus acclimatisation strategies to salinity stress. The seedlings were cultivated in a hydroponic system in media containing various concentrations of NaCl (0, 50, and 100 mM), imitating none, moderate, and severe salinity, respectively, for three weeks. In order to characterise the function and structure of the photosynthetic apparatus, Chl a fluorescence, gas exchange measurements, proteome analysis, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis were done inter alia. Significant differences in the response of the leaf and stem photosynthetic apparatus to severe salt stress were observed. Leaves became the place of harmful ion (Na⁺) accumulation, and the efficiency of their carboxylation decreased sharply. In turn, in stems, the reconstruction of the photosynthetic apparatus (antenna and photosystem complexes) activated alternative electron transport pathways, leading to effective ATP synthesis, which is required for the efficient translocation of Na⁺ to leaves. These changes enabled efficient stem carboxylation and made them the main source of assimilates. The observed changes indicate the high plasticity of grass pea photosynthetic apparatus, providing an effective mechanism of tolerance to salinity stress.