Laser cleaning of copper roofing sheets subjected to long-lasting environmental corrosion

The study was concerned with the effect of the laser fluence and pulse duration on the microstructure of copper roofing of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw (Poland) subjected to environmental degradation since the turn 19th century. The techniques used for the microstructure examinations included: SEM+EDS, X-ray diffraction analysis, surface profiling and colour analysis. The measurements of colour of the laser-cleaned surfaces showed that series of 100-μs pulses offer the most effective cleaning. It was also found that by controlling the number of laser pulses it is possible to control the roughness of the cleaned surface.     

Trennung, Nachweis und Bestimmung von Benzidin, α- und β-Naphthylamin

Summary Three methods (photometry, TLC, HPLC) are proposed for the separation, detection and determination of the cancerogenic compounds benzidine, - and -naphthylamine in drinking water. The necessary detection limit of 0.1 g/l has been achieved.     

Influence of rhodium additive on hydrogen electrosorption in palladium-rich Pd�CRh alloys

Hydrogen electrosorption into Pd-rich (>80?at.% Pd in the bulk) Pd?CRh alloys has been studied in acidic solutions (0.5?M H₂SO₄) using cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The influence of temperature (in the range between 283 and 328?K), electrode potential and alloy bulk composition on hydrogen electrosorption properties of Pd?CRh alloys is presented. It has been found that the additive of Rh to Pd?CRh alloys increases the maximum hydrogen solubility (for Rh bulk content below 10?at.%), decreases the potential of absorbed hydrogen oxidation peak and decreases the potential of the ???????? phase transition. Increasing temperature decreases the potential of absorbed hydrogen oxidation peak, the maximum hydrogen solubility, and the potential of the ???????? phase transition. The amounts of electrosorbed hydrogen for ??- and ??-phase boundaries, i.e., ??_max and ??_min, have been determined from the integration of the initial parts of current?Ctime responses in hydrogen absorption and desorption processes. The H/M ratio corresponding to ??_max increases with increasing Rh content, while for ??_min a maximum of H/M ratio is observed for the alloys containing ca. 95% Rh.     

Addendum to the paper “on certain exact solutions of the fourier equation for regions varying with time” : PMM vol. 37, n6, 1973, pp. 1145–1146

The exact solutions given in [1] are generalized to the case of cylindrical and spherical sectors rotating about the azimuth relative to the coordinate origin either at a uniform rate or with uniform acceleration (or deceleration). The class of equations of motion of the boundaries of the half-space (in the Cartesian coordinates) which lead to exact solutions of the Fourier equation defined in these domains, is enlarged.     

High-energy electron pair production on oxygen

Electron-positron pair production cross sections are calculated for 50-MeV electrons incident on an oxygen nucleus. The symmetric coplanar cross sections are emphasized. Neglecting exchange, the spectra of forward-scattered projectile electrons is numerically calculated. In the extreme relativistic and nonrelativistic limits for the produced pair kinetic energies, calculated cross sections are similar to those of Bhabha.     

The Evolution of High-Throughput Macromolecular Crystallography at Synchrotrons

On May 11 and 12, 2000, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, as it was then known, hosted a “Workshop on Techniques for Automated Mounting, Viewing and Centering Pre-Cooled Protein Crystals” [1 http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/conferences/workshops/px-robotics/. [Google Scholar], 2 E. Abola, Nature Structural Biology 7, 973–977 (2000).[Crossref], [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]]. The 12 presentations during the meeting all focused on the impact that automation could have on the performance of synchrotron beamlines and thus on research in structural biology. Two principal themes ran through the workshop: (1) robotics to mount crystals on a diffractometer; and (2) methods to place a crystal in the X-ray beam. Five conceptual and prototype robotic systems for automated mounting were described—the original ACTOR from Abbott Laboratories, later modified and marketed by Rigaku/MSC, and the systems which in final form become the ALS [3 G. Snell, Structure 12, 537–545 (2004).[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]], EMBL/ESRF SC3 [4 F. Cipriani, Acta Cryst. D62(10), 1251–1259 (2006). [Google Scholar]], APS/SBC [5 D. Shu, AIP Conference Proceedings 705(1), 1201–1204 (2004).[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]], and SSRL SAM robots [6 A. E. Cohen, J. Appl. Cryst. 5(6), 720–726 (2002).[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]]. By December of that year, the ACTOR had been installed for testing at Sector 32 of the Advanced Photon Source (Figure 1). Within three years, by the end of 2003, several of these robots, plus the commercial MARcsc from MAR Research, had been deployed to handle frozen protein crystals at beamlines for macromolecular crystallography (MX). Currently, at least 13 distinct robot types, not including variants of the ALS automounter, are employed at synchrotron beamlines to transfer crystals from storage to beam position.     

Polymer-polymer rectifying heterojunction based on poly(3,4-dicyanothiophene) and MEH-PPV

Thin, homogeneous films of a high electron affinity (n-dopable) polymer, poly(3,4-dicyanothiophene) (PDCTh), were prepared by in-situ thermal polymerization of 2,5-diiodo-3,4-dicyanothiophene on substrates. As a result of the presence of two cyano substituents on the thiophene backbone, PDCTh is an electronegative polymer, with the LUMO at ca. 3.6 eV and the HOMO at ca. 6.7 eV. We demonstrate the fabrication of polymer-polymer rectifying heterojunctions using PDCTh and poly(2-methoxy-5-(2′-ethyl-hexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene vinylene) (MEH-PPV) polymer layers on ITO-glass. Rectification ratios in the current voltage characteristics of these devices exceed 10.³ This device exhibits a photovoltaic effect with a dc sensitivity at -3 V reverse bias of 4 × 10^-4 A/W or quantum yield of 0.1% electrons/photon. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Polym Sci A: Polym Chem 36: 3115–3120, 1998