Electrochemical characterization of gold stepped surfaces modified with Pd

Three different single crystals, Au(111), Au(332), and Au(331), were used as the substrate for palladium deposition in the underpotential deposition (UPD) regime. The Au(111) single crystal was used for control experiments to compare the behavior of the vicinal surfaces. Cyclic voltammetry in 0.1 M sulfuric acid solution, as well as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used to study the hydrogen adsorption on the Pd thin films. Our results suggest that the voltammetric peaks at approximately 0.3 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) are related to the adsorption of hydrogen at large palladium terraces, and that at least two adjacent Pd rows are needed in order for the adsorption to take place. Further cycling to more positive potentials leads to the oxidation and slow dissolution of the Pd film. The behavior of the oxidation cycles is explained in terms of a higher stability of Pd at the steps.     

Mayer-vietoris sequences for the hermitian picard group

In this note, we study the functorial behaviour of the hermitian Picard group with respect to centrally induced ring morphisms. As an application, we construct Mayer-Vietoris sequences which provide an efficient tool to concretely calculate the hermitian Picard group.     

The synthesis of substituted pyrido[1′,2′:1,5]pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidines

A convenient synthesis of derivatives of the pyrido[1′,2′:1,5]pyrazolo[3,4-d]pyrimidine ring system from readily available 2-amino-3-cyano-5,7-diphenylpyrazolo[1,5-a]pyridine I and carbon disulfide, aryl isothiocyanates or nitriles is described. Derivatives of compound I undergo cyclization to the titled ring system by action of dimethylformamide dimethylacetal or hydrogen sulfide followed by treatment with triethylamine.     

Production and partial characterization of extracellular peroxidases produced bystreptomyces avermitilis UAH30

The effect of a number of environmental parameters (pH, temperature, carbon and nitrogen ratio of nutrient) on the production of extracellular peroxidase enzymes byStreptomyces avermitilis UAH30 was examined. Maximum specific peroxidase activity (0.12 U/mg of protein) was obtained after 72 hours of 1 incubation at 45‡C in a minimal salt medium (pH 7.5) containing 0.6% (w/v) yeast extract and 0.6% (w/v) xylan corresponding to a C:N ratio of 4 to 1. A study of the effect of incubation on peroxidase activity showed that the enzyme was stable and active for at least one hour after incubation at 50‡C while at higher temperatures the stability and activity of the peroxidase was reduced such that at 60‡C the peroxidase activity has a half life of 20 min while at 80‡C the half life was reduced to 5 min. The activation energy for deactivation as a result of thermal denaturation of the enzyme was calculated to be 80 ±7 kJ/mol. The optimum pH for the activity occurred between a pH range of 6.5–8.5 with pKa₁ and pKa₂ of 5.1 ±0.1 and 9.7 ±0.1, respectively. The K_m and V_max for the peroxidase activity were determined to be 1.45 mM and 0.31 unit per mg protein respectively using 2,4dicholorophenol (2,4-DCP) as a substrate. Characterization of the peroxidase activity revealed activity against L,3–4 dihydroxyphenylalanine and guaiacol, while no inhibition of peroxidase activity could be detected with the haem inhibitors such as potassium cyanide and sodium azide, suggesting the lack of haem component in the tertiary structure. Aspects of using the crude peroxidase preparation in the pulp and paper industry are discussed.     

A boundary integral method for computing forces on particles in unsteady Stokes and linear viscoelastic fluids

Accurately characterizing the forces acting on particles in fluids is of fundamental importance for understanding particle dynamics and binding kinetics. Conventional asymptotic solutions may lead to poor accuracy for neighboring particles. In this paper, we develop an accurate boundary integral method to calculate forces exerted on particles for a given velocity field. We focus our study on the fundamental two‐bead oscillating problem in an axisymmetric frame. The idea is to exploit a correspondence principle between the unsteady Stokes and linear viscoelasticity in the Fourier domain such that a unifying boundary integral formulation can be established for the resulting Brinkman equation. In addition to the dimension reduction vested in a boundary integral method, our formulation only requires the evaluation of single‐layer integrals, which can be carried out efficiently and accurately by a hybrid numerical integration scheme based on kernel decompositions. Comparison with known analytic solutions and existing asymptotic solutions confirms the uniform third‐order accuracy in space of our numerical scheme. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A new exact algorithm to solve the multi-trip vehicle routing problem with time windows and limited duration

This article tackles the multi-trip vehicle routing problem with time windows and limited duration. A trip is a timed route such that a succession of trips can be assigned to one vehicle. We provide an exact two-phase algorithm to solve it. The first phase enumerates possible ordered lists of clients which match the maximum trip duration criterion. The second phase uses a Branch and Price scheme to generate and choose a best set of trips so that all customers are visited. We propose a set covering formulation as the column generation master problem, where columns (variables) represent trips. The sub-problem selects appropriate timing for trips and has a pseudo-polynomial complexity. Computational results on Solomon’s benchmarks are presented. The computational times obtained with our new algorithm are much lower than the ones recently obtained in the only two studies published on this problem to date.     

On Generic Well-posedness of Restricted Chebyshev Center Problems in Banach Spaces

Let B （resp. K, BC,KC） denote the set of all nonempty bounded （resp. compact, bounded convex, compact convex） closed subsets of the Banach space X, endowed with the Hausdorff metric, and let G be a nonempty relatively weakly compact closed subset of X. Let B° stand for the set of all F ∈B such that the problem （F, G） is well-posed. We proved that, if X is strictly convex and Kadec, the set KC ∩ B° is a dense Gδ-subset of KC ／ G. Furthermore, if X is a uniformly convex Banach space, we will prove more, namely that the set B ／B° （resp. K ／ B°, BC ／B°, KC ／ B°） is a-porous in B （resp. K,BC, KC）. Moreover, we prove that for most （in the sense of the Baire category） closed bounded subsets G of X, the set K ／ B° is dense and uncountable in K.