Current air quality analytics and monitoring: A review

This review summarizes the different tools and concepts that are commonly applied in air quality monitoring. The monitoring of atmosphere is extremely important as the air quality is an important problem for large communities. Main requirements for analytical devices used for monitoring include a long period of autonomic operation and portability. These instruments, however, are often characterized by poor analytical performance. Monitoring networks are the most common tools used for monitoring, so large-scale monitoring programmes are summarized here. Biomonitoring, as a cheap and convenient alternative to traditional sample collection, is becoming more and more popular, although its main drawback is the lack of standard procedures. Telemonitoring is another approach to air monitoring, which offers some interesting opportunities, such as ease of coverage of large or remote areas, constituting a complementary approach to traditional strategies; however, it requires huge costs.     

A Mechanistic Study on the Oxidative Degradation of Dibenzazepine Derivatives by Manganese(III) Complexes in Acidic Sulfate Media

The oxidative degradation of tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) was studied in the presence of a large excess of the oxidizing agent manganese(III) and its reduced form manganese(II) sulfate in acidic media. The products were detected and identified using UV–vis, ESI‐MS, IR, and EPR methods. The mechanism of the reaction was studied for the following two classes of TCA: 10,11‐dihydro‐5H‐dibenz[b, f]azepines and dibenz[b, f]azepines. The oxidative degradation between dibenz[b, f]azepines and the manganese(III) ions resulted in the formation of substituted acridine with the same substituent as in the origin dibenz[b, f]azepine derivative. The pseudo–first‐order rate constants (k_obs) were determined for the degradation process. The dependences of the observed rate constants on the [Mn^III] with a zero intercept were linear. The reaction between 10,11‐dihydro‐5H‐dibenz[b, f]azepines, and the manganese(III) sulfate ion resulted in oxidative dehydrogenation, which proceeded via the formation of the following two intermediates: a free organic radical and a dimer. Further oxidation of the second intermediate led to a positively charged radical dimer as the single final product. Linear dependences of the pseudo–first‐order rate constants (k_obs) on the [Mn^III] with a zero intercept were established for the degradation of 10,11‐dihydro‐5H‐dibenz[b, f]azepines. The observed rate constants were dependent on the [H⁺] and independent of the [TCA] within the excess concentration range of the manganese(III) complexes used in the isolation method. The radical product of the degradation of 10,11‐dihydro‐5H‐dibenz[b, f]azepines was not stable in the aqueous solution and was subsequently transformed to a nonradical dimer in the next slower step. The observed rate constants were independent of the [Mn^III], independent of the [H⁺] and increased slightly with increasing TCA concentrations when TCA was used in excess. The mechanistic consequences of all of these results are discussed.     

Monotonic solutions of a quadratic integral equation of fractional order

In the paper we indicate an error made in the proof of the main result of the paper [M.A. Darwish, On quadratic integral equation of fractional orders, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 311 (2005) 112-119]. Moreover, we provide correct proof of a slightly modified version of the mentioned result. The main tool used in our proof is the technique associated with the Hausdorff measure of noncompactness.     

Separation of Monovinyl and Divinyl Protochlorophyllides Using C30 Reverse Phase High Performance Liquid Chromatography Column: Analytical and Preparative Applications

A new, high performance liquid chromatography method has been developed for the separation of monovinyl- and divinyl-protochlorophyllides, using commercially available, C₃₀ reverse phase column and isocratic elution. This method can be used both for analytical applications and preparative scale purification of monovinyl- and divinyl-protochlorophyllides using the same column where submilimolar concentrations of the crude protochlorophyllide extract can be separated in one run. The purity of the obtained protochlorophyllides was demonstrated by spectroscopic methods, as well by the formation of aggregates in toluene.     

On existence and asymptotic stability of solutions of a nonlinear integral equation

We prove an existence theorem for a nonlinear integral equation being a Volterra counterpart of an integral equation arising in the traffic theory. The method used in the proof allows us to obtain additional characterization in terms of asymptotic stability of solutions of an equation in question.     

A fading effect in the X-ray diffraction contrast of dislocations

Fringes in the dislocation image in X-ray section topography are shown to fade away partially when unpolarized radiation is used. The fading effect is explained in terms of an analogy with the polarization beat in a wedge crystal. The polarization nature of the phenomenon is confirmed through numerical simulations of the contrast.Dedicated to Professor Dr. Ulrich Bonse on the occasion of his 60th birthday     

Sensitised decomposition of microcystin-LR using UV radiation

UV radiation was applied to degrade cyanobacterial hepatotoxin, microcystin-LR in the presence of phycocyanin as a model natural sensitiser. The concentrations of both the toxin and the pigment used in the experiments were higher by several orders of magnitude than found in the environment. The photoreaction parameters were optimised. The process was found to be of limited use for water treatment due to its low efficacy. Additionally, pronounced UV-induced bleaching of the pigment significantly reducing the photoreaction rates of the toxin was observed for the highest UV radiation intensities applied.     

Application of platinum gauze activated by hydrogen to the adsorption separation of silver traces and their determination by aas or spectrophotometry

A method ("electrosorption") has been developed for separation of silver from copper by its deposition through internal electrolysis with hydrogen adsorbed on a platinum surface. The silver can then be stripped and determined by atomic-absorption spectrometry or the dithizone method. The activation of the platinum surface with adsorbed hydrogen can be achieved either electrolytically or by passing hydrogen gas through the solution in which the platinum is immersed. The method of electrosorption has been successfully applied to determination of trace levels of silver in copper metal.     

A neuro-fuzzy system for X-ray spectra interpretation

A decision scheme for the interpretation of spectra from wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry is described that encompasses elements from three areas of artificial intelligence: fuzzy logic, rule based expert systems and neural net technology.After transforming the recorded spectra to line spectra by appropriate background correction a reasoning scheme is applied that takes into account not only the observed spectra, but also the recording conditions and prior spectroscopic information regarding the relative emission probabilities and the usefulness of the different lines for the purpose of element identification. The latter is done on the basis of a previously described scheme to compute conditional a posteriori Bayes probabilities for a mean matrix. These different pieces of information are then assembled into a battery of fuzzy rules. The importance of the rules as well as the importance of the X-ray lines is determined in a training process, similar to the one in a feedforward back-propagation network.To further stabilize the results this network is pruned in a second training cycle. This, however, had little effect on the quality of interpretation.The advantages of this approach to the interpretation of X-ray spectra over older ones are numerous: the system adapts itself to better interpret spectra that are of greater importance to a laboratory as these are better represented in the training set; the fuzzy logic is capable of working with incomplete and uncertain knowledge, and the neural network results based on these fuzzy rules is readily interpretable by the X-ray spectroscopist as every rule can be expressed also in natural language as in any classical rule based system.On leave from Silesian University, Katowice, Poland