Synthesis and characterization of isotopically enriched methylmercury (CH3201Hg+)

A simple procedure for the synthesis of an important standard, isotopically enriched methylmercury, which is not commercially available, has been established successfully. The isotopically enriched standard synthesized is utilized in conventional isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS), as well as in speciated IDMS (SIDMS), for determination of the true concentration of methylmercury in environmental samples. The CH₃²⁰¹Hg⁺ standard has been synthesized from commercially available ²⁰¹HgO and tetramethyltin. The synthesis time required is 1 h at 60°C. The product is highly pure, yielding more than 90% as ²⁰¹Hg in CH₃²⁰¹Hg⁺. Hazardous dimethylmercury does not occur during this synthesis procedure. The product synthesized was analyzed using high‐performance liquid chromatography coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP‐MS) and ICP‐MS alone in order to determine its concentration, isotopic composition and purity. The stability of the product was also evaluated for over 6 months and found to be stable at 4°C in the dark. The isotopically enriched methylmercury synthesized can be used in SIDMS and IDMS analyses as a standard. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lower bounds for sums of Barban-Davenport-Halberstam type (supplement)

This article was processed by the author using the IATEX style filecljourl from Springer-Verlag.     

Interference inspection of the aspherical components of an objective for nanolithography

Methods and schemes to inspect the EUV mirror shape are developed on the basis of a point diffraction interferometer with computer processing of interferograms. A measurement accuracy to within 0.001 of a wavelength in the visual range is achieved.     

Calculation of the Radiating Characteristics of a Thermodynamically Nonuniform Gas Medium

Passive methods of remote analysis of waste gases of industrial enterprises and aircrafts engines and gases ejected in eruptions of volcanos, in fires, and in other processes disturbing the atmosphere are now of limited utility because of the lack of well-developed mathematical techniques for solving the inverse problems of gas analysis. However, the advantage of these methods is obvious, since the equipment is limited to a receiving device and the gas medium serves as a radiator. At the same time, in modern techniques, the interpretation of measurements of emissivities of gases is performed using a phenomenological approach such that experimental data on radiation characteristics of various objects are approximated by simple polynomial relations whose coefficients are determined by minimization methods. This approach does not allow one to investigate the mechanism of the processes occurring in a radiating medium and gives no way of solving the inverse problem of monitoring the composition and thermodynamic parameters of a medium which disturbs the atmosphere by thermal effects. In elaborating theoretical methods of gas analysis, the elaboration of the direct problem of calculation of radiating characteristics of gases is of importance, since it is not clear how the emissivity of a gas medium depends on its thermodynamic parameters. This paper is devoted to the above problem. Here, the error is estimated that arises in modeling a nonuniform gas medium with an actual temperature distribution, which linearly depends on coordinate, by a uniform gas layer. It is shown that the difference between the radiation intensities calculated for uniform and nonuniform media can be significant in the practically important case where the recording device is in a zone of normal temperatures. This implies that the error of reconstruction of the spectroscopic and molecular parameters of gaseous compounds from high-temperature measurements of the radiating and absorbing characteristics should take into account the thermodynamic nonuniformity of the medium.     

Research problems

This section appears from time to time. Contributions are invited, and should be submitted to R. C. Thompson, Mathematics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106.     

Numerical study of simultaneous natural convection heat transfer from both surfaces of a uniformly heated thin plate with arbitrary inclination

 Numerical studies were conducted to investigate the natural convection heat transfer around a uniformly heated thin plate with arbitrary inclination in an infinite space. The numerical approach was based on the finite volume technique with a nonstaggered grid arrangement. For handling the pressure–velocity coupling the SIMPLE-algorithm was used. QUICK scheme and first order upwind scheme were employed for discretization of the momentum and energy convective terms respectively. Plate width and heating rate were used to vary the modified Rayleigh number over the range of 4.8×10⁶ to 1.87×10⁸. Local and average heat transfer characteristics were compared with regarding to the inclination angle. The empirical expressions for local and average Nusselt number were correlated. It has been found that for inclination angle less than 10^∘, the flow and heat transfer characteristics are complicated and the average Nusselt number can not be correlated by one equation while for inclination angle larger than 10^∘, the average Nusselt number can be correlated into an elegant correlation. Received on 18 April 2001 / Published online: 29 November 2001     

A rapid and sensitive extractive spectrophotometric determination of copper(II) in pharmaceutical and environmental samples using benzildithiosemicarbazone.

Benzildithiosemicarbazone (BDTSC) is proposed as a sensitive and selective analytical reagent for the extractive spectrophotometric determination of copper(II). BDTSC reacts with copper(II) in the pH range 1.0-7.0 to form a yellowish complex. Beer's law is obeyed in the concentration range 0.5-0.4 microg cm(-3). The yellowish Cu(II)-BDTSC complex in chloroform shows a maximum absorbance at 380 nm, with molar absorptivity and Sandell's sensitivity values of 1.63 x 10(4) dm3 mol(-1) cm(-1) and 0.00389 microg cm(-2), respectively. A repetition of the method is checked by finding the relative standard deviation (RSD) (n = 10), which is 0.6%. The composition of the Cu(II)-BDTSC complex is established as 1:1 by slope analysis, molar ratio and Asmus' methods. An excellent linearity with a correlation coefficient value of 0.98 is obtained for the Cu(II)-BDTSC complex. The instability constant of the complex calculated from Edmond and Birnbaum's method is 7.70 x 10(-4) and that of Asmus' method is 7.66 x 10(-4), at room temperature. The method is successfully employed for the determination copper(II) in pharmaceutical and environmental samples. The reliability of the method is assured by analyzing the standard alloys (BCS 5g, 10g, 19e, 78, 32a, 207 and 179) and by inter-comparison of experimental values, using an atomic absorption spectrometer.     

On path lengths modulo three

We show that between any two nodes of a cubic, planar, three-connected graph there are three paths whose lengths are 0, 1, and 2 modulo 3, respectively. The proof is by a rather extensive case analysis. Counterexamples show that all three hypotheses (i.e., planarity, degree-three, and three-connectivity) are necessary.