Limited stability of the pH reference material sodium tetraborate decahydrate (“borax”)

Thermogravimetric and X-ray powder diffraction analyses revealed that the pH reference material sodium tetraborate decahydrate (“borax”) is not a stable substance but, loosing some of its water of crystallization, transforms slowly into the pentahydrate. The connected pH changes of the solutions are opposite to and larger than, those expected according to the dilution value of the decahydrate as shown by differential potentiometric measurements. The transformation rate depends on the storing time in the closed original container, the time of and after the first exposure of the material to the atmosphere, the frequency of and the relative humidity during subsequent exposures, and the temperature. The transformation reaction is not understood in detail. However, the experiments showed that sodium tetraborate decahydrate is a reliable pH reference material, whose pH is constant within ΔpH=±0.005 within at least two years after preparation, even if occasionally exposed to the atmosphere. Further work will show whether this time limit can be somewhat extended.     

Oxidation of polyethylene surfaces by remote plasma discharge: A comparison study with alternative oxidation methods

The reaction rates and products of remote oxygen plasma treatment, corona discharge, and ozone treatment of high and low density polyethylenes have been examined using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The oxygen uptake by remote plasma treatment was faster than that of other surface treatments using excited oxygen species. A steady state concentration of 18 ± 1% oxygen can be attained within 1 s of exposure in the remote plasma.     

Synthesis and spectral studies of platinum complexes with amide-group containing ligands

Summary Complexes of platinum(II) with 2-(acetylamino)benzoic acid, 2-(benzoylamino)benzoic acid, maleanilic acid, malea-1-naphthanilic acid, 2-(phenylamino)benzoic acid, 2-[(2-aminophenylamino)carbonyl]benzoic acid, 2-(aminobenzoyl)benzoic acid, 2-[1-naphthalenylamino)-carbonyl]benzoic acid, 2-(2-aminobenzoylamino)-benzoic acid have been prepared and characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductivity measurements, thermal data and i.r., electronic and n.m.r. spectra.     

Konvexität in halbgeordneten Ebenen

Let (E, (ie63-01),) be a halfordered plane and call convex if M contains for any two points a,bM all pointsx between a and b. It is shown that segments [a,b] are convex if and only if (E, (ie63-02)) is the affine plane of order 3, (E, (ie63-03),) is an ordered plane or is near-trivial.

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Herrn Professor Johannes Böhm zum 70. Geburtstag gewidmet     

A public-key cryptosystem utilizing cyclotomic fields

While it is well-known that the RSA public-key cryptosystem can be broken if its modulusN can be factored, it is not known whether there are other ways of breaking RSA. This paper presents a public-key scheme which necessarily requires knowledge of the factorization of its modulus in order to be broken. Rabin introduced the first system whose security is equivalent to the difficulty of factoring the modulus. His scheme is based on squaring (cubing) for encryption and extracting square (cube) roots for decryption. This introduces a 14 (19) ambiguity in the decryption. Various schemes which overcome this problem have been introduced for both the quadratic and cubic case. We generalize the ideas of Williams' cubic system to larger prime exponents. The cases of higher prime order introduce a number of problems not encountered in the quadratic and cubic cases, namely the existence of fundamental units in the underlying cyclotomic field, the evaluation of higher power residue symbols, and the increased difficulty of Euclidean division in the field.