Critical Shear Stress of Bimodal Sediment in Sand-Gravel Rivers

A new model for the critical shear stress and the transport of graded sediment is presented. The model is based on the size distribution of the bed surface and can be used to compute sediment transport rates in numerical simulations with an active layer model. This model makes a distinction between unimodal and bimodal sediments. It is assumed that all size fractions of unimodal sediments have the same critical shear stress while there is selective transport for the gravel fractions of bimodal sediments. A recently published laboratory transport data set is used to calibrate our model.     

Syllables as processing units in handwriting production.

This research focused on the syllable as a processing unit in handwriting. Participants wrote, in uppercase letters, words that had been visually presented. The interletter intervals provide information on the timing of motor production. In Experiment 1, French participants wrote words that shared the initial letters but had different syllable boundaries. In Experiment 2, French- and Spanish-speaking participants wrote cognates and pseudowords with a letter sequence that was always intrasyllabic in French and intersyllabic in Spanish. In Experiment 3, French-Spanish bilinguals wrote the cognates and pseudowords with the same type of sequences. In the 3 experiments, the critical interletter intervals were longer between syllables than within syllables, indicating that word syllable structure constrains motor production both in French and Spanish. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coding distributive lattices with Edge Firing Games

In this note, we show that any distributive lattice is isomorphic to the set of reachable configurations of an Edge Firing Game. Together with the result of James Propp, saying that the set of reachable configurations of any Edge Firing Game is always a distributive lattice, this shows that the two concepts are equivalent.     

Recovering gallium from residual bayer process liquor

Gallium is normally obtained by direct electrolysis as a by-product from Bayer process residual liquor at an aluminum processing plant. However, to permit any net accumulation of the metal, the gallium concentration must be at least about 0.3 g/l in the liquor. This article describes a continuous process of extraction with organic solvents and rhodamine-B, followed by a re-extraction step into aqueous media. The final product is a solid containing up to 18 wt.% Ga in a solid mixture of hydroxides and oxides of gallium and aluminum. This final product can then be electrolyzed to recover the gallium more efficiently.     

Study of siloxane additives migration to the surface of polyester-(melamine)-polyurethane coatings: Aging effects after ethanol cleaning

This study determines the influences of siloxane flow agents’ migration on the outermost surface composition of clearcoats, before and after ethanol cleaning. This evaluation is undertaken to improve adhesion of pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSAs) on automotive paint systems. Most of the siloxane flow agents segregate from the bulk to the clearcoat outermost surface during curing. These additives can cover until 50% of the surface area but X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) analyses indicate that they can be removed by ethanol cleaning. Composition of the cleaned clearcoats surfaces are similar as the composition of clearcoat formulated without siloxane additives: the polyester-(melamine)-polyurethane network is more detected than before cleaning. However, outermost surface analyses show that several aging weeks increase the siloxane additives segregation. This post-cleaning migration modifies the clearcoat surface composition and cancels the chemical modifications due to the ethanol cleaning. XPS analyses show that silicon concentrations after cleaning and aging are inversely proportional to the initial silicon concentrations measured after curing. It highlights that aging has to be controlled to improve adhesion of PSAs on clearcoats. A second ethanol cleaning on aged clearcoats is not effective to remove these new siloxane additives. Their formulation should be different from the flow agents and it could modify their solubility in ethanol. This result could also indicate that these new siloxane additives are not located on the last molecular layer of surface and they would not be soluble in ethanol.     

Substrate-mediated interactions and intermolecular forces between molecules adsorbed on surfaces

Adsorbate interactions and reactions on metal surfaces have been investigated using scanning tunneling microscopy. The manners in which adsorbates perturb the surface electronic structure in their vicinity are discussed. The effects these perturbations have on other molecules are shown to be important in overlayer growth. Interactions of molecules with surface steps are addressed, and each molecule's electron affinity is shown to dictate its adsorption sites at step edges. Standing waves emanating from steps are demonstrated to effect transient molecular adsorption up to 40 A away from the step edge. Halobenzene derivatives are used to demonstrate how the surface is important in aligning reactive intermediates.     

Investigations of ZnO thin films deposited by a reactive pulsed laser ablation

Highly transparent ZnO thin films were deposited at different substrate temperatures by pulsed laser deposition in an oxygen atmosphere. The thin films were characterized by various techniques including X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, optical absorption, and photoluminescence. We demonstrated that oriented wurtzite ZnO thin films could be deposited at room temperature using a high purity zinc target. Variable temperature photoluminescence revealed new characteristics in the band edge emission. The underlying mechanism for the observed phenomena was also discussed.     

Comparing the Performance of Organic Solvent Nanofiltration Membranes in Non-Polar Solvents

Organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) is gradually expanding from academic research to industrial implementation. The need for membranes with low and sharp molecular weight cutoffs that are able to operate under aggressive OSN conditions is increasing. However, the lack of comparable and uniform performance data frustrates the screening and membrane selection for processes. Here, a collaboration is presented between several academic and industrial partners analyzing the separation performance of 10 different membranes using three model process mixtures. Membrane materials range from classic polymeric and thin film composites (TFCs) to hybrid ceramic types. The model solutions were chosen to mimic cases relevant to today's industrial use: relatively low molar mass solutes (330–550 Da) in n-heptane, toluene, and anisole.