Thermally Induced Growth of ZnO Nanocrystals on Mixed Metal Oxide Surfaces

An in situ method for the growth of ZnO nanocrystals on Zn/Al mixed metal oxide (MMO) surfaces is presented. The key to this method is the thermal treatment of Zn/Al layered double hydroxides (Zn/Al LDHs) in the presence of nitrate anions, which results in partial demixing of the LDH/MMO structure and the subsequent crystallization of ZnO crystals on the surface of the forming MMO layers. In a first experimental series, thermal treatment of Zn/Al LDHs with different fractions of nitrate and carbonate in the interlayer space was examined by thermogravimetry coupled with mass spectrometry (TG‐MS) and in situ XRD. In a second experimental series, Zn/Al LDHs with only carbonate in the interlayer space were thermally treated in the presence of different amounts of an external nitrate source (NH₄NO₃). All obtained Zn/Al MMO samples were analysed by electron microscopy, nitrogen physisorption and powder X‐ray diffraction. The gas phase formed during nitrate decomposition turned out to be responsible for the formation of crystalline ZnO nanoparticles. Accordingly, both interlayer nitrate and the presence of ammonium nitrate led to the formation of supported ZnO nanocrystals with mean diameters between 100 and 400 nm, and both methods offer the possibility to tailor the amount and size of the ZnO crystals by means of the amount of nitrate.     

Estimates from above of certain double trigonometric sums

In this paper we consider double trigonometric sums. Expressions of this type appear in some problems of quantum chaos and number theory. We are interested in rotation numbers of bounded type. We prove a uniform linear bound on double trigonometric sums along the subsequence of denominators of the continued fraction. The proof uses elementary techniques and the analysis of cancellations in sums of certain oscillatory functions over rotations. We also include a proof of a result on discrepancy for rotations of bounded type and in the Appendix we give an elementary proof of a result by Hardy and Littlewood.     

Minmax due-date assignment with a time window for acceptable lead-times

In a standard DIF due-date assignment model, customers may consider late due-dates as unacceptable, i.e., if a due-date is assigned later than a pre-specified lead time, the supplier is penalized. This note extends this setting by adding a lower bound on the acceptable lead-time, reflecting e.g., the time needed by the customer for preparation of storage space. Thus, in addition to the standard earliness/tardiness penalties of jobs, our model contains penalties for early and tardy due-dates. The objective is of a minmax type, i.e. we try to minimize the highest (job and due-date) cost. An efficient O(n) solution algorithm (where n is the number of jobs) is introduced.     

Application of the Arlequin method in the virtual engineering design process

The creation of a holistic model which is able to represent the global dynamic behavior as well as local effects in certain regions leads to finite element models consisting of domains with different local meshes and a combination of different model dimensions. The different model domains have to be coupled such causing in an additional coupling error. The Arlequin method seems to be a flexible tool which has some advantages in comparison to alternative methods. In this paper the application of the Arlequin method on the coupling of a 3D continua model and a beam model is studied. (© 2010 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Consistency results on Newmark methods for dynamical contact problems

The paper considers the time integration of frictionless dynamical contact problems between viscoelastic bodies in the frame of the Signorini condition. Among the numerical integrators, interest focuses on the classical Newmark method, the improved energy dissipative version due to Kane et al., and the contact-stabilized Newmark method recently suggested by Deuflhard et al. In the absence of contact, any such variant is equivalent to the Störmer–Verlet scheme, which is well-known to have consistency order 2. In the presence of contact, however, the classical approach to discretization errors would not show consistency at all because of the discontinuity at the contact. Surprisingly, the question of consistency in the constrained situation has not been solved yet. The present paper fills this gap by means of a novel proof technique using specific norms based on earlier perturbation results due to the authors. The corresponding estimation of the local discretization error requires the bounded total variation of the solution. The results have consequences for the construction of an adaptive timestep control, which will be worked out subsequently in a forthcoming paper.     

Photopolymerization in water of diacetylenes chemisorbed onto noble metal nanoparticles: a spectroscopic study

Gold and silver nanoparticles of different size, decorated by a diacetylenic monomer having a COOH anchor group, were prepared in aqueous dispersions. Topochemical polymerization of the colloidal suspensions was obtained by UV irradiation and studied by means of spectroscopic techniques (UV–visible absorption, IR and Raman spectroscopies). A variety of polymer phases were found in the case of silver nanohybrids. The main contribution for this investigation was supplied by the Raman spectra, which provide detailed information on the polymer forms and on the preferred conformation of the alkylic side chains. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Better <Emphasis Type="Italic">s</Emphasis>–<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-tours by Gao trees

We consider the s–t-path TSP: given a finite metric space with two elements s and t, we look for a path from s to t that contains all the elements and has minimum total distance. We improve the approximation ratio for this problem from 1.599 to 1.566. Like previous algorithms, we solve the natural LP relaxation and represent an optimum solution \(x^*\) as a convex combination of spanning trees. Gao showed that there exists a spanning tree in the support of \(x^*\) that has only one edge in each narrow cut [i.e., each cut C with \(x^*(C)<2\)]. Our main theorem says that the spanning trees in the convex combination can be chosen such that many of them are such “Gao trees” simultaneously at all sufficiently narrow cuts.     

Automated segmentation of lateral ventricles from human and primate magnetic resonance images using cognition network technology

Automatic segmentation of different types of tissue from magnetic resonance images is of great importance for clinical and research applications, particularly large-scale and longitudinal studies of brain pathology. We developed a fully automated algorithm for the segmentation of lateral ventricles from cranial magnetic resonance images. This problem is of interest in the study of schizophrenia, dementia and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Our algorithm achieves comparable results to expert human raters. The theoretical approach, which is based on an emerging object-oriented technology that has been adapted and evaluated to process 3D data for the first time, may, in the future, be transferred to other important problems of magnetic resonance image analysis like gray/white matter segmentation.