Effect of the electrodeposition potential on the photoelectroactivity of the SnS/Sb2S3 thin films

Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry - The present work outlines a simple and novel approach to obtain nanostructured and heterostructured SnS/Sb2S3 thin films. This material showed enhanced...     

Correction to: Interlaboratory Reproducibility of Contour Method Data Analysis and Residual Stress Calculation

Experimental Mechanics - The original version of this article has been corrected to include authors middle initials in the author list. The details given in this correction are correct.     

A comparative study of calibration transfer methods for determination of gasoline quality parameters in three different near infrared spectrometers

This work presents a comparative study of calibration transfer among three near infrared spectrometers for determination of naphthenes and RON (Research Octane Number) in gasoline. Seven transfer methods are compared: direct standardization (DS), piecewise direct standardization (PDS), orthogonal signal correction (OSC), reverse standardization (RS), piecewise reverse standardization (PRS), slope and bias correction (SBC) and model updating (MU). Two pre-treatment procedures, namely standard normal variate (SNV) and multiplicative scatter correction (MSC), are also investigated. The choice of an appropriate number of transfer samples for each technique, as well as the effect of window size in PDS/PRS and OSC components, are discussed. A broad set of gasoline samples representative of the Northeastern states of Brazil is employed in the investigation. The results show that the use of calibration transfer yields prediction errors comparable to those obtained with complete recalibration of the secondary instrument. Overall, the results point to RS as the best method for the analytical problem under consideration. When storage and/or physical transportation of transfer samples are impractical, MU is more appropriate. The comprehensive investigation carried out in the present work will be of value for practitioners involved in networks of fuel monitoring.     

Isoflavonoid glycosides from the rhizomes of Iris germanica

Four isoflavone glycosides were isolated from the rhizomes of Iris germanica. Compounds 1 and 2 are new, while compounds 3 and 4 are known isoflavone glycosides. These compounds were identified as iriskashmirianin 4'-O-beta-D-glucoside (1), nigricin 4'-O-beta-D-glucoside (2), irilone 4'-O-beta-D-glucoside (3) and iridin (4). Their structures were determined with the help of spectroscopic methods.     

The isobutylene-isobutane alkylation process in liquid HF revisited

Details on the mechanism of HF catalyzed isobutylene-isobutane alkylation were investigated. On the basis of available experimental data and high-level quantum chemical calculations, a detailed reaction mechanism is proposed taking into account solvation effects of the medium. On the basis of our computational results, we explain why the density of the liquid media and stirring rates are the most important parameters to achieve maximum yield of alkylate, in agreement with experimental findings. The ab initio Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics calculations show that isobutylene is irreversibly protonated in the liquid HF medium at higher densities, leading to the ion pair formation, which is shown to be a minimum on the potential energy surface after optimization using periodic boundary conditions. The HF medium solvates preferentially the fluoride anion, which is found as solvated [FHF](-) or solvated F(-.)(HF)(3). On the other hand, the tert-butyl cation is weakly solvated, where the closest HF molecules appear at a distance of about 2.9 Angstrom with the fluorine termination of an HF chain.     

A linear semi-infinite programming strategy for constructing optimal wavelet transforms in multivariate calibration problems

A novel strategy for the optimization of wavelet transforms with respect to the statistics of the data set in multivariate calibration problems is proposed. The optimization follows a linear semi-infinite programming formulation, which does not display local maxima problems and can be reproducibly solved with modest computational effort. After the optimization, a variable selection algorithm is employed to choose a subset of wavelet coefficients with minimal collinearity. The selection allows the building of a calibration model by direct multiple linear regression on the wavelet coefficients. In an illustrative application involving the simultaneous determination of Mn, Mo, Cr, Ni, and Fe in steel samples by ICP-AES, the proposed strategy yielded more accurate predictions than PCR, PLS, and nonoptimized wavelet regression.     

Morita equivalence and Pedersen ideals

We show that two -algebras are strongly Morita equivalent if and only if their Pedersen ideals are Morita equivalent as rings with involution.

     

Speckle interferometry methods for displacement and strain measurements using photorefractive crystal

Photorefractive crystals offer several attractive features such as high resolution and in situ processing. As the images are erasable, these crystals are suitable for read–write applications and hence find potential use in speckle photography, image processing and holography. The barium titanate (BaTiO₃) crystal as recording medium has been extensively used as a novelty filter for real-time in-plane displacement measurements employing two-beam coupling configuration. This paper presents new optical configurations in speckle shear photography to measure in-plan displacement and the strain in real time using BaTiO₃ crystal as recording medium. Speckle photography studies are made using a simple two-beam coupling configuration. In speckle shear photography, a diffused object illuminated with two parallel narrow laser beams is imaged inside the crystal, and a pump beam is added at this plane. The speckle patterns due to each beam and the pump beam produce index gratings. When the object is deformed, the speckle patterns shift consequently. We now have four speckle fields: two generated from the interaction of pump beam with the index gratings and two pertaining to deformed states directly transmitted through the crystal. Thus, the fields from respective points on the object interfere after passage through the crystal and produce the Young's fringe patterns. Due to strain, the fringes in each pattern are of different width and orientation, resulting in the generation of a Moiré pattern. The strain is obtained from the width and orientation of the fringes in the Moiré pattern. The experiments are conducted on a specimen with a notch, which is subjected to tensile loading. The in-plane displacement is measured separately in another experiment. The above studies are carried out at Nd–Yag laser.