Behavior and surface energies of polybenzoxazines formed by polymerization with argon,oxygen, and hydrogen plasmas

Polybenzoxazine (PBZZ) thin films can be fabricated by the plasma‐polymerization technique with, as the energy source, plasmas of argon, oxygen, or hydrogen atoms and ions. When benzoxazine (BZZ) films are polymerized through the use of high‐energy argon atoms, electronegative oxygen atoms, or excited hydrogen atoms, the PBZZ films that form possess different properties and morphologies in their surfaces. High‐energy argon atoms provide a thermodynamic factor to initiate the ring‐opening polymerization of BZZ and result in the polymer surface having a grid‐like structure. The ring‐opening polymerization of the BZZ film that is initiated by cationic species such as oxygen atoms in plasma, is propagated around nodule structures to form the PBZZ. The excited hydrogen atom plasma initiates both polymerization and decomposition reactions simultaneously in the BZZ film and results in the formation of a porous structure on the PBZZ surface. We evaluated the surface energies of the PBZZ films polymerized by the action of these three plasmas by measuring the contact angles of diiodomethane and water droplets. The surface roughness of the films range from 0.5 to 26 nm, depending on the type of carrier gas and the plasma‐polymerization time. By estimating changes in thickness, we found that the PBZZ film synthesized by the oxygen plasma‐polymerization process undergoes the slowest rate of etching in CF₄ plasma. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 42: 4063–4074, 2004     

Cavitation mechanism in cyanobacterial growth inhibition by ultrasonic irradiation

To prevent cyanobacterial bloom in eutrophic water by ultrasonic method, ultrasonic irradiations with different parameters were tested to inhibit Spirulina platensis from growth. The experimental result based on cyanobacterial growth, chlorophyll a and photosynthetic activity showed that, the ultrasonic irradiation inhibited cyanobacterial proliferation effectively, furthermore the inhibition effectiveness increased in the order: 200 kHz>1.7 MHz>20 kHz and became saturated with the increased power. The inhibition mechanism can be mainly attributed to the mechanical damage to the cell structures caused by ultrasonic cavitation, which was confirmed by light microscopy and differential interference microscopy. The optimal frequency of 200 kHz in cavition and sonochemistry was also most effective in cyanobacterial growth inhibition. The higher frequency of 1.7 MHz is weaker than 20 kHz in cavitation, but has more effective inhibition because it is nearer to the resonance frequency of gas vesicle. The inhibition saturation with ultrasonic power was due to the ultrasonic attenuation induced by the acoustic shielding of bubbles enclosing the radiate surface of transducer.     

The First and Facile Synthesis of (±) Syringaresinol

The first and facile synthesis of (±)syringaresinol was described.     

New heuristics for over-constrained flight to gate assignments

We consider the over-constrained Airport Gate Assignment Problem where the number of flights exceed the number of gates available, and where the objectives are to minimize the number of ungated flights and the total walking distances. The problem is formulated as a binary quadratic programming problem. We design a greedy algorithm and use a Tabu Search meta-heuristic to solve the problem. The greedy algorithm minimizes ungated flights while we devise a new neighbourhood search technique, the Interval Exchange Move, which allows us flexibility in seeking good solutions, especially when flight schedules are dense in time. Experiments conducted give good results.     

N-[(2,2–propinyldiferrocenyl)methinyl]benzoyl hydrazone and its bivalent transition metal complexes

Transition Metal Chemistry -     

How to Build Robust Shared Control Systems

Previous researchers have designed shared control schemes with a view to minimising the likelihood that participants will conspire to perform an unauthorised act. But, human nature being what it is, systems inevitably fail; so shared control schemes should also be designed so that the police can identify conspirators after the fact. This requirement leads us to search for schemes with sparse access structures. We show how this can be done using ideas from coding theory. In particular, secret sharing schemes based on geometric codes whose dual [n,k,d] codes have d and n as their only nonzero weights are suitable. We determine their access structures and analyse their properties. We have found almost all of them, and established some relations among codes, designs and secret-sharing schemes.     

A Pair of Dimeric Stilbene Epimers from Gnetum Montanum

GnetummontanumofgnetaceaisdistributedinsouthernChina.AsaChinesefOlkmedicine,itslianasareusedtotreatbronchitisandarthritis'.Previousinvestigationofthisspeciesledtotheisolationofsomealkaloidsanddibenzyletherde,i.ati.es2.lnourstudies,tenknowncomponentsincludingresveratrol,isohapontigenin,daucosterol,6-sitosterol,stearicacid,gnetifolinE,gnetol,isorhapontigenin-3-O-6-glucopyra(-)E-viniferinandgnetifolinCwereisolatedfromthesameresource.Atthesametime,apairoftraceepimerswereobtained.Thisisthefirste…     

Electron attenuation lengths in fullerene and fullerides

Using X-ray photoemission measurements, we have determined the attenuation length of C 1s photoelectrons in C₆₀ film to be 21.5 Å with the incident photon energy of Mg Kα radiation. The inelastic mean free path calculated with the TPP-2M algorithm coincides fairly well with the experimentally determined attenuation length, indicating the validity of the algorithm to fullerene and fullerides. The inelastic mean free paths for some fullerides, i.e. K₃C₆₀, K₆C₆₀, Ba₄C₆₀, Sm_2.75C₆₀ and Sm₆C₆₀ are calculated to help the quantitative analyses of the photoemission spectra for these compounds.     

光泽精化学发光体系的研究与应用

对光泽精化学发光体系的动力学性质、荧光光谱、化学发光光谱及化学发光机理进行研究和探讨。详细研究了光泽精 - H2 O2 - Co( )流动注射化学发光体系的最佳分析条件。结果表明 ,当光泽精 (L c)为 2 .5×10 - 5mol/L、H2 O2 为 0 .5 mol/L、Na OH为 0 .4 mol/L、CTMAB为 2 .0× 10 - 5mol/L时 ,测定 Co( )的校准曲线线性范围为 0 .0 5— 2 0 0μg/m L ,检出限为 0 .0 1μg/m L。对 10μg/m L Co( )连续测定 7次 ,相对标准偏差为 1.7%。     

~ Transform Demonstration of Dark Soliton Solutions Found by Inverse Scattering

One of the basic problems about the inverse scattering transform for solving a completely integrable nonlinear evolutions equation is to demonstrate that the Jost solutions obtained from the inverse scattering equations of Cauchy integral satisfy the Lax equations. Such a basic problem still exists in the procedure of deriving the dark soliton solutions of the NLS equation in normal dispersion with non-vanishing boundary conditions through the inverse scattering transform. In this paper, a pair of Jost solutions with same analytic properties are composed to be a 2 × 2 matrix and then another pair are introduced to be its right inverse confirmed by the Liouville theorem. As they are both 2 × 2 matrices, the right inverse should be the left inverse too, based upon which it is not difficult to show that these Jost solutions satisfy both the first and second Lax equations. As a result of compatibility condition, the dark soliton solutions definitely satisfy the NLS equation in normal dispersion with non-vanishing boundary conditions.