The effect of support morphology on the reaction of oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane to ethylene at short contact times

The oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane is carried out in short contact time reactors over Pt and LaMnO₃ based catalysts supported on a large number of different ceramic substrates (45, 60 and 80 ppi foam monoliths and 200, 400, 600, 900 and 1200 cpsi honeycomb monoliths). Experimental results, obtained under the same conditions at varying the C₂H₆/O₂ ratio, showed that the highest performance in terms of ethylene selectivity and yield is always attained on LaMnO₃ catalysts. Furthermore, the results are significantly influenced by the morphology and cell density of the support, with 45 and 60 ppi foams and 400 and 600 cpsi honeycombs giving the best performance. The experimental results are explained by means of geometrical and fluid dynamic considerations on the support, and by means of a 2D mathematical model, which clearly indicates an optimal intermediate cell density for maximising ethylene selectivity and yield.     

Degradation of lincomycin in aqueous medium: Coupling of solar photocatalysis and membrane separation

The photocatalytic oxidation of a common antibiotic, the lincomycin was carried out in aqueous suspensions of polycrystalline TiO₂ Degussa P25 irradiated by sunlight. In order to improve the performance of the lincomycin degradation a hybrid system consisting of a solar photoreactor with the photocatalyst in suspension coupled with a membrane module, used to confine both photocatalyst and pollutants in the reaction environment, was tested.A preliminary study was carried out in order to determine some kinetics parameters of the drug photodegradation. The influence of initial substrate concentration on the lincomycin photooxidation rate was investigated. The photooxidation rate follows a pseudo-first order kinetics with respect to the lincomycin concentration under the used experimental conditions. The presence of the membrane reactor allows the catalyst separation and to operate in continuous mode as the membranes rejection for lincomycin and its oxidation products was quite high.     

Connexin 43 and Connexin 26 Involvement in the Ponatinib-Induced Cardiomyopathy: Sex-Related Differences in a Murine Model

Cardiac connexins (Cxs) are proteins responsible for proper heart function. They form gap junctions that mediate electrical and chemical signalling throughout the cardiac system, and thus enable a synchronized contraction. Connexins can also individually participate in many signal transduction pathways, interacting with intracellular proteins at various cellular compartments. Altered connexin expression and localization have been described in diseased myocardium and the aim of this study is to assess the involvement of Cx43, Cx26, and some related molecules in ponatinib-induced cardiac toxicity. Ponatinib is a new multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitor that has been successfully used against human malignancies, but its cardiotoxicity remains worrisome. Therefore, understanding its signaling mechanism is important to adopt potential anti cardiac damage strategies. Our experiments were performed on hearts from male and female mice treated with ponatinib and with ponatinib plus siRNA-Notch1 by using immunofluorescence, Western blotting, and proteomic analyses. The altered cardiac function and the change in Cxs expression observed in mice after ponatinib treatment, were results dependent on the Notch1 pathway and sex. Females showed a lower susceptibility to ponatinib than males. The downmodulation of cardiac Cx43, Cx26 and miR-122, high pS368-Cx43 phosphorylation, cell viability and survival activation could represent some of the female adaptative/compensatory reactions to ponatinib cardiotoxicity.     

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance rapid and structure-specific determination ofω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in fish lipids

Based on proton nuclear magnetic resonance (¹H-NMR) spectroscopy, a rapid and structure-specific method for the determination of ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in fish lipids is presented. The different chemical shift observed for the methyl resonance of ω-3 PUFAs (δ=0.95 ppm) with respect to the methyl resonance of all other fatty acids (δ=0.86 ppm) has provided the possibility of proposing a new and rapid method for the determination of ω-3 PUFA content. Twenty-four fish lipid samples (raw, cooked and canned albacore tuna) produced results that showed good agreement between¹H-NMR analysis and gas chromatographic determination. Raw and cooked samples showed significantly higher levels of ω-3 PUFA than canned tuna.     

Kinetics of thermal liquefaction of coal

A model is presented for the kinetic study of the thermal liquefaction of Belle Ayr subbituminous and Burning Star bituminous coals with anthracene oil, hydrogenated anthracene oil and hydrogenated phenanthrene. All experiments were performed in a continuous-feed, stirred tank reactor, at a temperature of 450 °C and a space time of approximately 5 to 55 min. A kinetic model which includes a reaction: coal + oil→more reactive coal, correlates the data reasonably well. This reaction explains the net consumption of anthracene oil during the initial stages of liquefaction. Such a reaction may account for a portion of the swelling of coal at low space times and the sizable increase of viscosity of reaction slurry during these initial stages of liquefaction. It is also observed that the yield of oil increases when solvents of increasing hydrogen donor capacity are used.     

Efficient application identification and the temporal and spatial stability of classification schema

Motivated by the importance of accurate identification for a range of applications, this paper compares and contrasts the effective and efficient classification of network-based applications using behavioral observations of network-traffic and those using deep-packet inspection.Importantly, throughout our work we are able to make comparison with data possessing an accurate, independently determined ground-truth that describes the actual applications causing the network-traffic observed.In a unique study in both the spatial-domain: comparing across different network-locations and in the temporal-domain: comparing across a number of years of data, we illustrate the decay in classification accuracy across a range of application–classification mechanisms. Further, we document the accuracy of spatial classification without training data possessing spatial diversity.Finally, we illustrate the classification of UDP traffic. We use the same classification approach for both stateful flows (TCP) and stateless flows based upon UDP. Importantly, we demonstrate high levels of accuracy: greater than 92% for the worst circumstance regardless of the application.     

The influence of attentional engagement and spatial characteristics on time perception in virtual reality

Virtual Reality - Virtual reality (VR) is a simulation tool that is being used extensively to study the effects of training and perception. However, several studies have shown that some aspects of...     

Two is better than one: A diploid genotype for neural networks

In nature the genotype of many organisms exhibits diploidy, i.e., it includes two copies of every gene. In this paper we describe the results of simulations comparing the behavior of haploid and diploid populations of ecological neural networks living in both fixed and changing environments. We show that diploid genotypes create more variability in fitness in the population than haploid genotypes and buffer better environmental change; as a consequence, if one wants to obtain good results for both average and peak fitness in a single population one should choose a diploid population with an appropriate mutation rate. Some results of our simulations parallel biological findings.     

On the Construction of Classes of Suffix Trees for Square Matrices: Algorithms and Applications

We provide a uniform framework for the study of index data structures for a two-dimensional matrixTEXT[1:n, 1:n] whose entries are drawn from an ordered alphabetΣ. An index forTEXTcan be informally seen as the two-dimensional analog of the suffix tree for a string. It allows on-line searches and statistics to be performed onTEXTby representing compactly theΘ(n³) square submatrices ofTEXTin optimalO(n²) space. We identify 4ⁿ⁻¹families of indices forTEXT, each containing ∏ⁿ_i=1 (2i−1)! isomorphic data structures. We also develop techniques leading to a single algorithm that efficiently builds any index in any family inO(n² log n) time andO(n²) space. Such an algorithm improves in various respects the algorithms for the construction of the PAT tree and the Lsuffix tree. The framework and the algorithm easily generalize tod>2 dimensions. Moreover, as part of our algorithm, we provide new algorithmic tools that yield a space-efficient implementation of the “naming scheme” of R. Karpet al.(in“Proceedings, Fourth Symposium on Theory of Computing,” pp. 125–136) for strings and matrices.     

Minutia Cylinder-Code: a new representation and matching technique for fingerprint recognition

In this paper, we introduce the Minutia Cylinder-Code (MCC): a novel representation based on 3D data structures (called cylinders), built from minutiae distances and angles. The cylinders can be created starting from a subset of the mandatory features (minutiae position and direction) defined by standards like ISO/IEC 19794-2 (2005). Thanks to the cylinder invariance, fixed-length, and bit-oriented coding, some simple but very effective metrics can be defined to compute local similarities and to consolidate them into a global score. Extensive experiments over FVC2006 databases prove the superiority of MCC with respect to three well-known techniques and demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining a very effective (and interoperable) fingerprint recognition implementation for light architectures.