On the Apparent Compensation Effect Observed for Two Consecutive Reactions

A critical analysis is presented of the use of an overall single rate reaction equation instead of the true rate equation corresponding to a complex process consisting of two consecutive reactions. In accordance with this approximation, which is often used in the kinetic analysis of systems in which several reactions take place, the overall process is described by apparent activation parameters (the apparent activation energy E_ap and the apparent pre-exponential factor A_ap) and an apparent conversion function. The theoretical isotherms (α=α(t), where α is the conversion degree and t is time) were simulated for a system in which two consecutive reactions occur. In this case, the apparent activation parameters depend on (a) the considered range of temperature; and (b) the temperature for a given conversion degree. It is shown that the apparent activation parameters are correlated by the compensation effect relationship: ln A_ap = α^* + β^*E_ap where α^* and β^* are the linear regression parameters. The possibility of using the apparent kinetic parameters to predict the isotherms α=α(t) for temperatures lower than those for which these parameters were evaluated is discussed. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Water-soluble magnetic nanoparticles with biologically active stabilizers

We present the results of the interaction of iron oxide nanoparticles with some biologically active surfactants, namely, oleic acid and cytotoxic alkanolamine derivatives. Physico-chemical properties, as magnetization, magnetite concentration and particle diameter, of the prepared magnetic samples were studied. The nanoparticle size of 11 nm for toluene magnetic fluid determined by TEM is in good agreement with the data obtained by the method of magnetogranulometry. In vitro cytotoxic effect of water-soluble nanoparticles with different iron oxide:oleic acid molar ratio were revealed against human fibrosarcoma and mouse hepatoma cells. In vivo results using a sarcoma mouse model showed observable antitumor action.     

Homology stability for classical regular semisimple varieties

We use techniques from homotopy theory, in particular the connection between configuration spaces and iterated loop spaces, to give geometric explanations of stability results for the cohomology of the varieties of regular semisimple elements in the simple complex Lie algebras of classical type A, B or C, as well as in the group . We show that the cohomology spaces of stable versions of these varieties have an algebraic stucture, which identifies them as “free Poisson algebras” with suitable degree shifts. Using this, we are able to give explicit formulae for the corresponding Poincaré series, which lead to power series identities by comparison with earlier work. The cases of type B and C involve ideas from equivariant homotopy theory. Our results may be interpreted in terms of the actions of a Weyl group on its coinvariant algebra (i.e. the coordinate ring of the affine space on which it acts, modulo the invariants of positive degree; this space coincides with the cohomology ring of the flag variety of the associated Lie group) and on the cohomology of its associated complex discriminant variety. Received August 31, 1998; in final form August 1, 1999 / Published online October 30, 2000     

Development of a hybrid-fuzzy air temperature controller for a supersonic combustion test facility

 Hydrogen gas is burned in air to raise and maintain the stagnation temperature of a supersonic combustion test facility to a desired setpoint. In order to reach the desired operating conditions for stagnation temperature, there are three phases to the hydrogen control; H₂ ignition at facility start-up, H₂ ramp-up while the facility is ramped-up, and H₂ iteration to achieve the desired temperature setpoint. Each phase incorporates a different type of control. Fuzzy logic is used to design a computer based supervisory controller that recognizes the different phases of operation and chooses the appropriate control method. Received: 28 November 1999/Accepted: 2 November 2000     

Automated antenna positioning algorithms for wireless fixed-access networks

This article addresses a real-life problem - obtaining communication links between multiple base station sites, by positioning a minimal set of fixed-access relay antenna sites on a given terrain. Reducing the number of relay antenna sites is considered critical due to substantial installation and maintenance costs. Despite the significant cost saved by eliminating even a single antenna site, an inefficient manual approach is employed due to the computational complexity of the problem. From the theoretical point of view we show that this problem is not only NP hard, but also does not have a constant approximation. In this paper we suggest several alternative automated heuristics, relying on terrain preprocessing to find educated potential points for positioning relay stations. A large-scale computer-based experiment consisting of approximately 7,000 different scenarios was conducted. The quality of alternative solutions was compared by isolating and displaying factors that were found to affect the standard deviation of the solutions supplied by the tested heuristics. The results of the simulation based experiments show that the saving potential increases when more base stations are needed to be interconnected. The designs of a human expert were compared to the automatically generated solutions for a small subset of the experiment scenarios. Our studies indicate that for small networks (e.g., connecting up to ten base stations), the results obtained by human experts are adequate although they rarely exceed the quality of automated alternatives. However, the process of obtaining these results in comparison to automated heuristics is longer. In addition, when more base station sites need to be interconnected, the human approach is easily outperformed by our heuristics, both in terms of better results (fewer antennas) and in significant shorter calculation times.     

Integral dependent on parameter E in classical non-isothermal kinetics with linear heating rate

A simple procedure to obtain the derivative of the temperature integral with respect to the activation energy is presented.