Gadolinium doped Ceria nanocrystals synthesized from mesoporous silica

Highly crystalline and thermally stable gadolinium doped ceria (GDC) particles have been synthesized by hard template route for the first time. This oxide is being recognized as an intermediate temperature (500–700 °C) electrolyte material for applications in solid-oxide fuel cells. The GDC particles show high crystallinity and nanometric size (2.83 ± 0.05 nm in diameter) and Raman analyses confirm the formation of the solid solution instead of a CeO₂ and Gd₂O₃ mixture. EDX and EELS studies indicate a stoichiometry coherent with the Gd_0.2Ce_0.8O_1.9 phase. The synthesized nanometric powder is expected to be used in solid oxide fuel cells as well as in the catalytic treatment of automobile exhaust fumes.

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Voice Change in Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis

Voice problems are seldom reported in pollen allergy, although the allergic reaction involves the entire airways. The objective of this study was to investigate voice dysfunction during the pollen season in patients with allergic rhinitis. Thirty patients with verified birch pollen allergy and 30 controls were investigated twice, during the pollen season and outside the pollen season. Both times they scored respiratory and voice symptoms, the latter with the validated questionnaire Voice Handicap Index (VHI), and performed standardized voice recordings. These recordings were analyzed in a controlled manner by a professional voice therapist. During the allergy season, patients reported more respiratory and voice symptoms compared with controls. Those with blinded scored voice dysfunction scored their voice quality during springtime as 31 mm (95% confidence interval [CI] 20-42 mm), compared with 13 mm (95% CI 6-21 mm for participants without voice dysfunction (P<0.01). Furthermore, the group with experienced voice dysfunction scored significantly higher on the VHI in the functional and physical domains and in the total VHI score. Although voice problems during the pollen season are rarely discussed, in allergic rhinitis the larynx may also be involved. These findings support that some patients experience voice change, an experience which can be objectively confirmed.     

Casimir Effect on a Finite Lattice

Lattice quantum field theory is a well established branch of modern quantum field theory (QFT). However, it has only peripherally been used for the investigation of Casimir systems — i.e. for systems in which quantum fields are distorted by their interaction with classical background objects. This article presents a Hamiltonian lattice formulation of static Casimir systems at a level of generality appropriate for an introductory investigation. Background structure — represented by a lattice potential V(x) — is introduced along one spatial direction with translation invariance in all other spatial directions. It is simple to extend this formulation to include arbitrary background structure in more than one spatial direction. Following some general analysis two specific finite 1D lattice QFT systems are analyzed in detail. The first has three Dirichlet boundaries at the lattice sites x = 0, l and L (L > l > 0) with vanishing lattice potential V(x) everywhere in between. The vacuum energy and vacuum stress tensor T^μν for this system are calculated in 0 < x < L. Very careful attention must be and is given to renormalization in the (continuum) limit of vanishing lattice constant. Globally and locally this lattice system is seen to closely mimic the corresponding 1D continuum system — as one would hope. Then we introduce a lattice potential V(x) = c/(x — x₀)² centered at x = x₀ < 0 to the left of the boundary at x = 0 and extending through this boundary and the middle Dirichlet boundary at x = l out to the right‐hand boundary x = L > l and beyond. The vacuum energy and T^μν are calculated for this far more complicated system in the region 0 〈 x < L, again with very good results. The internal consistency of the lattice version of this system is carefully examined. Our conclusion is that finite‐lattice formulation provides a powerful and effective tool, capable of solving completely many Casimir systems which could not possibly be handled using continuum methods. This is precisely our reason for introducing it. Future investigations (in one and more dimensions and in dynamical as well as static contexts) will display more fully the power of this method.     

Analysis of fracture behaviour of fibre reinforced polypropylene using R-curve concept

Experimental results for investigation of dynamical crack resistance curves in the instrumented Charpy impact test on polypropylene (PP)/glass fibre composites are presented. For this purpose the multiple specimen R-curve method, stop-block technique is used. With the aid of J-integral versus stable crack growth (δa) curves the influence of a special coupler system on crack toughness as resistance against stable crack growth is discussed. It is shown that it is possible to quantify different energy dissipative processes with the new fracture mechanical material value J × T₇ (T₇ - tearing modulus). The problems of determining physical crack initiation values for short fibre composites are discussed. The physical material background for using the ‘plastic hinge’ model to describe the deformation behaviour of PP/glass fibre composites is shown, using the example of selected crack opening displacement (σ) versus δa curves.     

Comparative Metabolomic Analysis of Four Fabaceae and Relationship to In Vitro Nematicidal Activity against Xiphinema index

The grapevine fanleaf virus (GFLV), responsible for fanleaf degeneration, is spread in vineyards by the soil nematode Xiphinema index. Nematicide molecules were used to limit the spread of the disease until they were banned due to negative environmental impacts. Therefore, there is a growing interest in alternative methods, including plant-derived products with antagonistic effects to X. index. In this work, we evaluated the nematicidal potential of the aerial parts and roots of four Fabaceae: sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia), birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), sweet clover (Melilotus albus), and red clover (Trifolium pratense), as well as that of sainfoin-based commercial pellets. For all tested plants, either aerial or root parts, or both of them, exhibited a nematicidal effect on X. index in vitro, pellets being as effective as freshly harvested plants. Comparative metabolomic analyses did not reveal molecules or molecule families specifically associated with antagonistic properties toward X. index, suggesting that the nematicidal effect is the result of a combination of different molecules rather than associated with a single compound. Finally, scanning electron microscope observations did not reveal the visible impact of O. viciifolia extract on X. index cuticle, suggesting that alteration of the cuticle may not be the primary cause of their nematicidal effect.     

Baseline Methods for the Parameter Estimation of the Generalized Pareto Distribution

In the parameter estimation of limit extreme value distributions, most employed methods only use some of the available data. Using the peaks-over-threshold method for Generalized Pareto Distribution (GPD), only the observations above a certain threshold are considered; therefore, a big amount of information is wasted. The aim of this work is to make the most of the information provided by the observations in order to improve the accuracy of Bayesian parameter estimation. We present two new Bayesian methods to estimate the parameters of the GPD, taking into account the whole data set from the baseline distribution and the existing relations between the baseline and the limit GPD parameters in order to define highly informative priors. We make a comparison between the Bayesian Metropolis–Hastings algorithm with data over the threshold and the new methods when the baseline distribution is a stable distribution, whose properties assure we can reduce the problem to study standard distributions and also allow us to propose new estimators for the parameters of the tail distribution. Specifically, three cases of stable distributions were considered: Normal, Lévy and Cauchy distributions, as main examples of the different behaviors of the tails of a distribution. Nevertheless, the methods would be applicable to many other baseline distributions through finding relations between baseline and GPD parameters via studies of simulations. To illustrate this situation, we study the application of the methods with real data of air pollution in Badajoz (Spain), whose baseline distribution fits a Gamma, and show that the baseline methods improve estimates compared to the Bayesian Metropolis–Hastings algorithm.