Singlewall carbon nanotubes covered with polystyrene nanoparticles by in‐situ miniemulsion polymerization

This work is to make carbon nanotubes dispersible in both water and organic solvents without oxidation and cutting nanotube threads. Polystyrene‐singlewall carbon nanotube (PS‐SWNT) composites were prepared with three different methods: miniemulsion polymerization, conventional emulsion polymerization, and mixing SWNT with PS latex. The two factors, crosslinking and surface coverage of PS are important factors for the mechanical and electrical properties, including dispersion states of SWNT in various solvents. The PS‐SWNT composite prepared via a conventional emulsion polymerization showed SWNT bundles entirely covered with PS, whereas the PS‐SWNT composite prepared via a miniemulsion polymerization showed SWNT partially covered with crosslinked PS nanoparticles. The method of mixing SWNTs with PS latex did not show the well dispersed state of carbon nanotubes because PS was not crosslinked and was dissolved in a solvent, and nanotubes separated from PS precipitated. So the PS nanoparticle‐SWNT composite had lower electrical resistance, and higher mechanical strength than the other composites made by the latter two methods. As the amount of SWNT increases, the bare surface area of SWNT increases and the electrical conductivity increases in the composite made by the miniemulsion polymerization. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 573–584, 2006     

A Dynamic location problem for graphs

We introduce a class of optimization problems, calleddynamic location problems, involving the processing of requests that occur sequentially at the nodes of a graphG. This leads to the definition of a new parameter of graphs, called the window indexWX(G), that measures how large a window into the future is needed to solve every instance of the dynamic location problem onG optimally on-line. We completely characterize this parameter:WX(G)k if and only ifG is a weak retract of a product of complete graphs of size at mostk. As a byproduct, we obtain two (polynomially recognizable) structural characterizations of such graphs, extending a result of Bandelt.     

Detection of vibration-rotational band 5-0 of 12C16O X 1sigma+ with cavity ringdown absorption near 0.96 microm

We have recorded extremely weak absorption in the overtone band 5-0 of 12C16O X 1sigma+ near 0.96 microm with cavity ringdown spectroscopy; the light source was a Raman-shifted dye laser pumped with a frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser. This band shows lines in branch P to be much more intense than corresponding lines in branch R, in contrast to all lower overtone bands v-0 (v = 1-4). This reversal in relative intensity is explained quantitatively in terms of a radial function for the electric dipolar moment of CO. We have estimated absorption line strengths for P3-P18 in band 5-0 of 12C16O; these strengths are consistent with a pure vibrational matrix element <5/p(x)/0> = (3.6 +/- 0.3) x 10(-36) C m of the electric dipolar moment p(x), a Herman-Wallis coefficient C0(5) of about -0.1, and a band strength of (5.1 +/- 1.3) x 10(-29) m at 293 K.     

An Algorithm for the Economic Design of <Emphasis Type="Italic">np</Emphasis> Charts for a Multiplicity of Assignable Causes

Chiu, in 1976, studied the economic design of np charts for processes subject to a multiplicity of assignable causes. Chiu developed a two-step minimization procedure to obtain the three control variables, namely, the sampling interval, the sample size and the acceptance number. Although Chiu's two-step minimization procedure is simple, applicable and down to earth, it is rather inefficient and has some drawbacks. This paper presents an algorithm to overcome these drawbacks. The results and the execution times of all numerical examples show that the accuracy and the efficiency of the algorithm is reasonably good.