A high pressure-high temperature cell for electrical resistivity studies

A high pressure-high temperature cell which permitsin-situ pressure and temperature calibration is described. The cell is in an opposed anvil configuaration, and houses two samples with four probes each along with a miniature furnace and a thermocouple. The pressure and temperature capability of the cell are 100 kbar and 1000°C respectively. This cell was developed to study the electrical resistivity of metals and alloys at high pressure and high temperature. Bismuth was used to calibrate the cell. We report in this paper the design details and the performance of this cell. Ni has been chosen as a test problem and the observed behaviour is indicated to show the quality of data.     

Analysis of a Fork/Join Synchronization Station with Inputs from Coxian Servers in a Closed Queuing Network

Fork/join stations are commonly used to model the synchronization constraints in queuing models of computer networks, fabrication/assembly systems and material control strategies for manufacturing systems. This paper presents an exact analysis of a fork/join station in a closed queuing network with inputs from servers with two-phase Coxian service distributions, which models a wide range of variability in the input processes. The underlying queue length and departure processes are analyzed to determine performance measures such as throughput, distributions of the queue length and inter-departure times from the fork/join station. The results show that, for certain parameter settings, variability in the arrival processes has a significant impact on system performance. The model is also used to study the sensitivity of performance measures such as throughput, mean queue lengths, and variability of inter-departure times for a wide range of input parameters and network populations.     

Placing a finite size facility with a center objective on a rectangular plane with barriers

This paper addresses the finite size 1-center placement problem on a rectangular plane in the presence of barriers. Barriers are regions in which both facility location and travel through are prohibited. The feasible region for facility placement is subdivided into cells along the lines of Larson and Sadiq [R.C. Larson, G. Sadiq, Facility locations with the Manhattan metric in the presence of barriers to travel, Operations Research 31 (4) (1983) 652–669]. To overcome complications induced by the center (minimax) objective, we analyze the resultant cells based on the cell corners. We study the problem when the facility orientation is known a priori. We obtain domination results when the facility is fully contained inside 1, 2 and 3-cornered cells. For full containment in a 4-cornered cell, we formulate the problem as a linear program. However, when the facility intersects gridlines, analytical representation of the distance functions becomes challenging. We study the difficulties of this case and formulate our problem as a linear or nonlinear program, depending on whether the feasible region is convex or nonconvex. An analysis of the solution complexity is presented along with an illustrative numerical example.     

Nonfactorizable contributions to weak D → PV decays

We investigate nonfactorizable contributions to two-body hadronic decays of the charmed mesons to a pseudoscalar meson and a vector meson in Cabibbo-favored, Cabibbo-suppressed and Cabibbo-doubly suppressed modes. Employing SU(3)-flavor symmetry for the nonfactorizable matrix elements, we obtain branching ratios of the decays in consistent agreement with experiment.     

Interaction of a Surface-Active Ionic Liquid with an Antidepressant Drug: Micellization and Spectroscopic Studies

The interaction of the antidepressant drug nortriptyline hydrochloride (NOT) with the surface-active ionic liquid (SAIL), 1-decyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride, [C₁₀mim][Cl], has been studied using multiple techniques, including conductometric titration, tensiometric, fluorometric, dynamic light scattering and UV–visible spectrophotometric measurements. There is a significant decrease in the cmc of SAIL on the addition of the drug NOT, indicating adsorption of drug molecules in the outer portion of the micelle. In the present study, the values of the packing parameter, P, lie in the range of 0–0.3, which suggests that the micelles formed are spherical in nature. More negative values of the standard Gibbs energy of adsorption, \( \Delta G_{\text{ad}}^{ \circ } \), compared to \( \Delta G_{\text{m}}^{ \circ } \) support our contention that adsorption of SAIL on the air-solution interface is relatively more favorable than its micellization in the presence of NOT. Fluorescence and DLS studies indicate that the aggregation number, N_agg, and hydrodynamic radius of SAIL increase with increase in concentration of NOT. The UV–visible spectroscopic study confirms the formation of a new complex between SAIL and NOT; this is also supported by the negative Gibbs energy of complexation.     

Determination of antimony in lead-zinc concentrates and other smelter products by atomic absorption spectrometry after extraction with di-isopropyl ether and reductive stripping

Several papers have appeared in the literature describing the determination of antimony, where antimony(V) is extracted into the organic phase and the organic solutions directly analyzed by atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS). This paper describes a procedure where antimony from the organic solution is reductively stripped into an aqueous phase and analyzed for antimony by AAS. The advantage of the method for a routine process control laboratory is highlighted.