Sample preparation,instrumental analysis,and natural distribution of complex organic pollutants in the wastewater from unconventional gas production

Large amounts of flowback and produced water (FPW) have been generated from hydraulic fracturing process for the production of unconventional gas such as shale gas. Complex organic pollutants are abundantly present in FPW with revealed toxicity to aquatic organisms and these contaminants may transfer into surrounding aquatic environment. Characterization and determination of complicated organic pollutants in FPW remains a challenge due to its complex composition and high salinity matrix. This review article covers the progress of recent 5 years regarding the sample preparation and instrumental analysis methods and thus summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of these methods for critical analysis of organic contaminants in FPW samples. Furthermore, the natural distribution of detected organic compounds and their transformation were reviewed and discussed to enhance the understanding of spatial and temporal behaviors of these organic pollutants in natural environment, paving the way for future development of pollution control policies and strategies. Enlightened by the studies of FPW contamination in the US, the investigations of FPW contamination in China continued to grow due to rapidly growing production of shale gas in China and resulted pollution.     

Stability analysis of fractional order fuzzy cellular neural networks with leakage delay and time varying delays

In this paper we investigated the stability of fractional order fuzzy cellular neural networks with leakage delay and time varying delays. Based on Lyapunov theory and applying bounded techniques of fractional calculation, sufficient criterion are established to guarantee the stability. Hybrid feedback control is applied to derive the proposed results. Finally, numerical examples with simulation results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Orientation dependence in high harmonics of ZnO with polarization corrections to counteract the birefringent effect

We investigate the influence of the birefringence on the high-order harmonics in an a-cut Zn O crystal with midinfrared laser pulses. The high harmonics exhibit strong dependence on the alignment of the crystal with respect to the laser polarization. We introduce the Jones calculus to counteract the birefringent effect and obtain the harmonics with polarization corrections in Zn O. We show that the birefringent effect plays an important role in the orientation dependence of HHG.     

Ultrahigh Loading Copper Single Atom Catalyst for Palladium-free Wacker Oxidation

Wacker oxidation is an industry-adopted process to transform olefins into value-added epoxides and carbonyls. However, traditional Wacker oxidation involves the use of homogeneous palladium and copper catalysts for the olefin addition and reductive elimination. Here, we demonstrated an ultrahigh loading Cu single atom catalyst(14% Cu, mass fraction) for the palladium-free Wacker oxidation of 4-vinylanisole into the corresponding ketone with N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride as an additive under mild conditions. Mechanistic studies by ¹⁸O and deuterium isotope labelling revealed a hydrogen shift mechanism in this palladium-free process using N-methylhydroxylamine hydrochloride as the oxygen source. The reaction scope can be further extended to Kucherov oxidation. Our study paves the way to replace noble metal catalysts in the traditional homogeneous processes with single atom catalysts.     

从化学视角剖析烫发、染发原理及顺序*

从头发的结构和组成出发分析头发形状和颜色改变的可能性,剖析烫发、染发的化学原理,阐释先烫发后染发的本质原因,从化学视角辨证地看待烫发、染发的利弊。     

Renormalization group second‐order approximation for singularly perturbed nonlinear ordinary differential equations

We consider a 2 time scale nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations. The small parameter of the system is the ratio ϵ of the time scales. We search for an approximation involving only the slow time unknowns and valid uniformly for all times at order O(ϵ²). A classical approach to study these problems is Tikhonov's singular perturbation theorem. We develop an approach leading to a higher order approximation using the renormalization group (RG) method. We apply it in 2 steps. In the first step, we show that the RG method allows for approximation of the fast time variables by their RG expansion taken at the slow time unknowns. Next, we study the slow time equations, where the fast time unknowns are replaced by their RG expansion. This allows to rigorously show the second order uniform error estimate. Our result is a higher order extension of Hoppensteadt's work on the Tikhonov singular perturbation theorem for infinite times. The proposed procedure is suitable for problems from applications, and it is computationally less demanding than the classical Vasil'eva‐O'Malley expansion. We apply the developed method to a mathematical model of stem cell dynamics.     

On the domain of fractional Laplacians and related generators of Feller processes

In this paper we study the domain of the generator of stable processes, stable-like processes and more general pseudo- and integro-differential operators which naturally arise both in analysis and as infinitesimal generators of Lévy- and Lévy-type (Feller) processes. In particular we obtain conditions on the symbol of the operator ensuring that certain (variable order) Hölder and Hölder–Zygmund spaces are in the domain. We use tools from probability theory to investigate the small-time asymptotics of the generalized moments of a Lévy or Lévy-type process ${(X_t)}_{t\ge 0}$,

$\underset{t\to 0}{\lim }?\frac{1}{t}({\mathbb{E}}^{x}f(X_t)?f(x)),x\in {\mathbb{R}}^d,$

for functions f which are not necessarily bounded or differentiable. The pointwise limit exists for fixed $x\in {\mathbb{R}}^d$ if f satisfies a Hölder condition at x. Moreover, we give sufficient conditions which ensure that the limit exists uniformly in the space of continuous functions vanishing at infinity. As an application we prove that the domain of the generator of ${(X_t)}_{t\ge 0}$ contains certain Hölder spaces of variable order. Our results apply, in particular, to stable-like processes, relativistic stable-like processes, solutions of Lévy-driven SDEs and Lévy processes.     

Pressure controllable phase transition in MoTe2 by the interlayer band occupancy

High pressure can effectively control the phase transition of MoTe₂ in experiment, but the mechanism is still unclear. In this work, we show by first-principles calculations that the phase transition is suppressed and $1T^{\prime }$ phase becomes more stable under high pressure, which originates from the pressure-induced change of the interlayer band occupancies near the Fermi energy. Specifically, the interlayer states of $1T^{\prime }$ phase tend to be fully occupied under high pressure, while they keep partially occupied for the $T_d$ phase. The increase of the band occupancies makes the $1T^{\prime }$ phase more favorable in energy and prevents the structure changing from $1T^{\prime }$ to $T_d$ phase. Moreover, we also analyze the superconductivity under high pressure based on BCS theory by calculating the density of states and phonon spectra. Our results may shed some light on understanding the relationship between the interlayer band occupancy and crystal stability of MoTe₂ under high pressures.     

Existential monadic second order logic of undirected graphs: The Le Bars conjecture is false

In 2001, J.-M. Le Bars disproved the zero-one law (that says that every sentence from a certain logic is either true asymptotically almost surely (a.a.s.), or false a.a.s.) for existential monadic second order sentences (EMSO) on undirected graphs. He proved that there exists an EMSO sentence ? such that $\mathsf{P}(G_n??)$ does not converge as $n\to \infty$ (here, the probability distribution is uniform over the set of all graphs on the labeled set of vertices $\{1,\dots ,n\}$). In the same paper, he conjectured that, for EMSO sentences with 2 first order variables, the zero-one law holds. In this paper, we disprove this conjecture.