Some intriguing items in the history of scientific balances

The short survey covers the development of the balance since its invention in the Neolithic era. Scales have been used most probably first as tools in trading, but already in Old Egyptian papyrus its use in techniques is documented. Its theory was cleared by Aristotle and Archimedes and at least at that time it was used as a scientific instrument. Today the balance is still the most widely used instrument in science and there are still improvements.     

Tetrahalidometallate(II) Ionic Liquids with More than One Metal: The Effect of Bromide versus Chloride

Fifteen N-butylpyridinium salts – five monometallic [C₄Py]₂[MBr₄] and ten bimetallic [C₄Py]₂[M_0.5^aM_0.5^bBr₄] (M=Co, Cu, Mn, Ni, Zn) – were synthesized, and their structures and thermal and electrochemical properties were studied. All the compounds are ionic liquids (ILs) with melting points between 64 and 101 °C. Powder and single-crystal X-ray diffraction show that all ILs are isostructural. The electrochemical stability windows of the ILs are between 2 and 3 V. The conductivities at room temperature are between 10⁻⁵ and 10⁻⁶ S cm⁻¹. At elevated temperatures, the conductivities reach up to 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹ at 70 °C. The structures and properties of the current bromide-based ILs were also compared with those of previous examples using chloride ligands, which illustrated differences and similarities between the two groups of ILs.     

Elemental Chemometrics as Tools to Depict Stalked Barnacle (Pollicipes pollicipes) Harvest Locations and Food Safety

The stalked barnacle Pollicipes pollicipes is an abundant species on the very exposed rocky shore habitats of the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, constituting also an important economical resource, as a seafood item with high commercial value. Twenty-four elements were measured by untargeted total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (TXRF) in the edible peduncle of stalked barnacles sampled in six sites along the Portuguese western coast, comprising a total of 90 individuals. The elemental profile of 90 individuals originated from several geographical sites (N = 15 per site), were analysed using several chemometric multivariate approaches (variable in importance partial least square discriminant analysis (VIP-PLS-DA), stepwise linear discriminant analysis (S-LDA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), random forests (RF) and canonical analysis of principal components (CAP)), to evaluate the ability of each approach to trace the geographical origin of the animals collected. As a suspension feeder, this species introduces a high degree of background noise, leading to a comparatively lower classification of the chemometric approaches based on the complete elemental profile of the peduncle (canonical analysis of principal components and linear discriminant analysis). The application of variable selection approaches such as the VIP-PLS-DA and S-LDA significantly increased the classification accuracy (77.8% and 84.4%, respectively) of the samples according to their harvesting area, while reducing the number of elements needed for this classification, and thus the background noise. Moreover, the selected elements are similar to those selected by other random and non-random approaches, reinforcing the reliability of this selection. This untargeted analytical procedure also allowed to depict the degree of risk, in terms of human consumption of these animals, highlighting the geographical areas where these delicacies presented lower values for critical elements compared to the standard thresholds for human consumption.     

Asynchronous sampling for ultrafast experiments with low momentum compaction at the ANKA ring

A high‐repetition‐rate pump–probe experiment is presented, based on the asynchronous sampling approach. The low‐α mode at the synchrotron ANKA can be used for a time resolution down to the picosecond limit for the time‐domain sampling of the coherent THz emission as well as for hard X‐ray pump–probe experiments, which probe structural dynamics in the condensed phase. It is shown that a synchronization of better than 1 ps is achieved, and examples of phonon dynamics of semiconductors are presented.     

Macrocyclization of polymers via ring‐closing metathesis and azide/alkyne‐“click”‐reactions: An approach to cyclic polyisobutylenes

The end‐to‐end cyclization of telechelic polyisobutylenes (PIB's) toward cyclic polyisobutylenes is reported, using either ring‐closing metathesis (RCM) or the azide/alkyne‐“click”‐reaction. The first approach uses bisallyl‐telchelic PIB's (M_n = 1650, 3680, 9770 g mol^?1) and Grubbs 1st‐, 2nd‐, and 3rd‐generation catalyst leading to cyclic PIB's in 60–80% yield, with narrow polydispersities (M_w/M_n = 1.25). Azide/alkyne‐“click”‐reactions of bisalkyne‐telechelic PIB's (M_n = 3840 and 9820 g mol^?1) with excess of 1,11‐diazido‐undecane leads to the formation of mixtures of linear/cyclic PIB's under formation of oligomeric cycles. Subsequent reaction of the residual azide‐moieties in the linear PIB's with excess of alkyne‐telechelic PEO enables the chromatographic removal of the resulting linear PEO‐PIB‐block copolymers by column chromatography. Thus pure cyclic PIB's can be obtained using this double‐“click”‐method, devoid of linear contaminants. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 48: 671–680, 2010     

Convergence of nonconforming multigrid methods without full elliptic regularity

We consider nonconforming multigrid methods for symmetric positive definite second and fourth order elliptic boundary value problems which do not have full elliptic regularity. We prove that there is a bound () for the contraction number of the -cycle algorithm which is independent of mesh level, provided that the number of smoothing steps is sufficiently large. We also show that the symmetric variable -cycle algorithm is an optimal preconditioner.