An innovative extensional viscometer for low-viscosity and low-elasticity liquids

A spinline-type extensional viscometer is described in which an innovative method of tensile stress measurement is employed. A limited amount of liquid flows through a vertical capillary at a constant flow rate under the influence of a constant pressure head. The drainage time decreases when the liquid stream leaving the capillary is stretched by the application of vacuum. These drainage times are measured in a manner similar to that used for intrinsic viscosity measurements. The measured difference in drainage times, with and without stretching, is trivially related to the extensional stress at the capillary exit, and this provides a very simple method of accurately determining fluid stretching forces having a magnitude as low as 10^-4 N; stresses at other axial locations in the stretched liquid jet are obtained by means of a force balance in the usual manner. The validity of the proposed technique is demonstrated by obtaining the expected results for a Newtonian oil having a shear viscosity of 56.2 mPa-s. Also presented are preliminary data on polyethylene oxide-in-water solutions having an even lower shear viscosity.     

A novel piezoelectric immunosensor for the detection of malarial Plasmodium falciparum histidine rich protein-2 antigen

A novel piezoelectric (PZ) immunosensor for the direct detection of malarial Plasmodium falciparum histidine rich protein-2 (PfHRP-2) antigen was developed. The mixed self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of thioctic acid and 1-dodecanethiol were formed on gold surface of quartz crystal. Cyclic voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and surface Raman spectroscopy techniques were used to characterize the mixed SAMs. The rabbit anti-PfHRP-2 antibodies were coupled on mixed SAM modified gold surface of quartz crystal via NHS/EDC activation method. The PZ immunosensor was applied to detect PfHRP-2 in the linear range of 15-60 ng/ml with a detection limit of 12 ng/ml. It was also found that even after 14 days of storage, 50% of the activity still remained. Clinical human serum samples were tested with this method, and the results were in agreement with those obtained from commercially available ICT kit (NOW^® Malaria).     

Extension of Caristi’s fixed point theorem to vector valued metric spaces

The paper deals with the classical Caristi fixed point theorem in vector valued metric spaces. The results obtained seem to be new in this setting.     

Strong convergence theorems for strongly continuous semigroups of pseudocontractions

In this work, strongly continuous semigroups of pseudocontractions are studied based on an implicit iterative algorithm. Strong convergence theorems of fixed points are obtained in an arbitrary Banach space.     

Reduction of CO2 on a tricarbonyl rhenium(I) complex: modeling a catalytic cycle

Tricarbonyl rhenium(I) complexes, such as Re(bpy)(CO)(3)Cl where bpy = 2,2'-bipyridyl, have demonstrated superior activity in catalyzing CO(2) reduction in the presence of sacrificial electron donors. We have utilized density functional theory (DFT) to investigate a potential pathway for formate production via a rhenium-hydride insertion mechanism in the presence of triethylamine (TEA). On the basis of prior studies, we re-examined the role of TEA and studied a catalytic cycle for CO(2) reduction in which TEA functions as both the hydrogen atom and the electron donor for reducing CO(2) into formate. The catalytic cycle is found to be exothermic with inclusion of solvation and may be viewed as a two-electron reduction of CO(2) because the net result is a transfer of hydride from TEA to CO(2). In addition, we have identified structures of key intermediates in the CO(2)-reduction process and found that the insertion step has a very modest barrier in acetonitrile. These findings provide a molecular-level understanding to formate production via CO(2) reduction mediated by transition-metal complexes. A theoretical investigation is underway to elucidate the formation of carbon monoxide, another common product in Re-catalyzed CO(2) reduction.     

On the approximation of nonlinear singular self-adjoint second order boundary value problems

We investigate the approximation of the solutions of a class of nonlinear second order singular boundary value problems with a self-adjoint linear part. Our strategy involves two ingredients. First, we take advantage of certain boundary condition functions to obtain well behaved functions of the solutions. Second, we integrate the problem over an interval that avoids the singularity. We are able to prove a uniform convergence result for the approximate solutions. We describe how the approximation is constructed for the various values of the deficiency index associated with the differential equation. The solution of the nonlinear problem is obtained by a globally convergent iterative method.     

Fixed-point theorems for S-KKM maps

A number of new fixed-point results are presented for S-KKM self maps. Also the notion of essentiality for S-KKM maps is introduced.     

Dead cores of singular Dirichlet boundary value problems with ϕ-Laplacian

The paper discusses the existence of positive solutions, dead core solutions and pseudodead core solutions of the singular Dirichlet problem (ϕ(u′))′ = λf(t, u, u′), u(0) = u(T) = A. Here λ is the positive parameter, A > 0, f is singular at the value 0 of its first phase variable and may be singular at the value A of its first and at the value 0 of its second phase variable. This work was supported by grant no. A100190703 of the Grant Agency of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and by the Council of Czech Government MSM 6198959214.     

The influence of the entrance channel mass asymmetry on the reaction mechanism

We have tried to investigate the influence of the entrance channel mass asymmetry on the reaction mechanisms associated with heavy ion collisions. Two systems, one very much asymmetric (O+Mo) and the other one almost symmetric (Cr+Fe), were studied in detail by measuring evaporation residues, deep inelastic collision products and fission fragments. An important fraction of the fragments observed in the Cr+Fe system exhibits all the characteristics of fission fragments. The analysis of these data seems to indicate that these fission like products are most likely emitted by a long lived composite system having not reached full statistical equilibrium for all the degrees of freedom. As a consequence, the fusion cross section for this symmetric system is too low as compared to predictions based on a critical distance approach for fusion, whereas the asymmetric system (O+Mo) is well understood in term of the same model.