A laser extraction/combustion technique for in situ delta(13)C analysis of organic and inorganic materials

A CO(2) laser extraction system is described for in situ delta(13)C analysis of organic and inorganic materials. Carbonaceous compounds volatilized by the laser are quantitatively converted to CO(2) gas by a combustion furnace mounted after the sample chamber. Gases produced by the laser and combustion processes are swept by helium carrier gas and separated by a packed gas chromatography column prior to their introduction to an isotope ratio monitoring mass spectrometer. A sample of lentil bean was analyzed at a spatial resolution of 200 μm and yielded delta(13)C values with precision of +/- 0.3 per thousand. The accuracy of delta(13)C measurements was better than +/- 0.5 per thousand from NBS 22 (mineral oil), USGS 24 (graphite), and IAEA CO-1 (calcium carbonate). Copyright 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Carbon dioxide conversion to valuable chemical products over composite catalytic systems

This paper reports an experimental study on catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide to methanol,ethanol and acetic acid.Catalysts having different catalytic functions were synthesized and combined in different ways to enhance the selectivity to desired products.The combined catalyst system possessed the following functions:methanol synthesis,Fischer-Tropsch synthesis,water-gas-shift and hydrogenation.Results showed that the methods of integrating these catalytic functions played an important role in achieving the desired product selectivity.We speculate that if methanol synthesis sites were located adjacent to the C-C chain growth sites,the formation rate of C₂ oxygenates would be enhanced.The advantage of using a high temperature methanol catalyst PdZnAl in the combined catalyst system was demonstrated.In the presence of PdZnAl catalyst,the combined catalyst system was stable at 380°C.It was observed that,at high temperature,kinetics favored oxygenate formation.The results implied that the process can be intensified by operating at high temperature using Pd-based methanol synthesis catalyst.Steam reforming of the byproduct organics was demonstrated as a means to provide supplemental hydrogen.Preliminary process design,simulation,and economic analysis of the proposed CO₂ conversion process were carried out.Economic analysis indicates how ethanol production cost was affected by the price of CO₂ and hydrogen.     

Baryon antibaryon production in the central region at 85 GeV/c

In a search for glueballs and exotic states decaying into baryons and antibaryons we have investigated the production of baryon antibaryon pairs produced centrally in the reactions π⁺/pp → π⁺/p(X ⁰)p at 85 GeV/c. In particular, channels whereX ⁰ goes to \(p\bar p,p\bar p\pi ^ + \pi ^ - ,p\bar p2\pi ^ + 2\pi ^ - \) and \(\Lambda \bar \Lambda \) have been observed. No significant new structure is observed in the mass spectra.     

An adeno-associated viral vector transduces the rat hypothalamus and amygdala more efficient than a lentiviral vector

Background  

This study compared the transduction efficiencies of an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector, which was pseudotyped with an AAV1 capsid and encoded the green fluorescent protein (GFP), with a lentiviral (LV) vector, which was pseudotyped with a VSV-G envelop and encoded the discosoma red fluorescent protein (dsRed), to investigate which viral vector transduced the lateral hypothalamus or the amygdala more efficiently. The LV-dsRed and AAV1-GFP vector were mixed and injected into the lateral hypothalamus or into the amygdala of adult rats. The titers that were injected were 1 × 10⁸ or 1 × 10⁹ genomic copies of AAV1-GFP and 1 × 10⁵ transducing units of LV-dsRed.     

Implementation of the moving particle semi-implicit method on GPU

The Moving Particle Semi-implicit (MPS) method performs well in simulating violent free surface flow and hence becomes popular in the area of fluid flow simulation. However, the implementations of searching neighbouring particles and solving the large sparse matrix equations (Poisson-type equation) are very time-consuming. In order to utilize the tremendous power of parallel computation of Graphics Processing Units (GPU), this study has developed a GPU-based MPS model employing the Compute Unified Device Ar...     

Coherent production of π+ mesons in ν-neon interactions

The coherent production of π⁺ mesons by charged current neutrino interactions on neon nuclei in BEBC is compared to the predictions of the PCAC hypothesis and the meson dominance model. Good agreement is observed.     

Analysis of transverse momentum and event shape invN scattering

The transverse momentum distributions of hadrons produced in neutrino-nucleon charged current interactions and their dependence onW are analysed in detail. It is found that the components of the transverse momentum in the event plane and normal to it increase withW at about the same rate throughout the availableW range. A comparison withe ⁺ e ^? data is made. Studies of the energy flow and angular distributions in the events classified as planar do not show clear evidence for high energy, wide angle gluon radiation, in contrast to the conclusion of a previous analysis of similar neutrino data.     

Dilepton and trilepton production by antineutrinos and neutrinos in neon

A sample of over 25,000 fully measured neutrino and antineutrino charged current interactions in BEBC includes 192 dilepton candidates. The prompt signal after subtraction of background is 41 ±7µ⁺ e ^-, 35±7µ⁺µ^- events from \(\bar v\) interactions, and 32±7µ^-µ⁺ events from ν interactions. There are 2 trileptons, µ^-µ^- e ⁺ and µ^-µ^-µ⁺. Results are compared with other experimental data and with the standard model. Limits to prompt like sign µ⁺ e ⁺, µ⁺µ⁺ and µ^-µ^- signals are given and compared with other experiments and with theoretical calculations.