Permeability of poly(1-4-piperazinediylterephthaloyl) microcapsules towards sodium chloride

Water-loaded poly(1,4-piperazinediylterephthaloyl) (PPiP) microcapsules were prepared by an interfacial polycondensation technique using piperazine and terephthaloyl dichloride as water-soluble and water-insoluble monomers, respectively. The organic solvents used were mixtures of cyclohexane and chloroform and n-hexane and chloroform in various volume ratios. The microcapsules obtained were washed successively with n-hexane, acetone, and water and fractionated into several fractions of different sizes. A suspension of each fraction and a solution of sodium chloride were mixed and the change with time in electroconductivity of the mixture was measured to estimate the rate of salt entry into the microcapsules. The permeability coefficient for the salt was calculated from the rate of salt entry. It was found that the permeability increased as the capsule size increased and was higher for the capsules prepared with n-hexane—chloroform mixtures than for those prepared with cyclohexane—chloroform mixtures. These findings were explained in terms of the density and thickness of the capsule membrane.     

Overview of coupled map lattices

Studies in coupled map lattices are briefly surveyed in connection with the papers in the present focus issue.     

Two-dimensional residual charge density distribution measurement of surface leader

The charge density distribution of the surface leader has never been measured before. Because the surface leader usually covers a long distance, and the surface potential caused by leader discharge is usually very high, this creates difficulties in measuring the potential distribution of the surface leader. In this paper, with a feedback type electrostatic probe based on a field-nullify technique, a charge density distribution scanning system is developed. A two-layer structure pipe is designed to lower the surface potential after discharge. In this way, the surface potential distribution caused by the residual charge of the leader discharge under the application voltage as high as to 40 kV can be measured. The surface charge density distribution including the leader and streamer is perfectly measured, which is in good agreement with the photograph.     

New text indexing functionalities of the compressed suffix arrays

New text indexing functionalities of the compressed suffix arrays are proposed. The compressed suffix array proposed by Grossi and Vitter is a space-efficient data structure for text indexing. It occupies only O(n) bits for a text of length n; however it also uses the text itself that occupies bits for the alphabet . In this paper we modify the data structure so that pattern matching can be done without any access to the text. In addition to the original functions of the compressed suffix array, we add new operations search, decompress and inverse to the compressed suffix arrays. We show that the new index can find occ occurrences of any substring P of the text in O(|P|logn+occlog^εn) time for any fixed 1ε>0 without access to the text. The index also can decompress a part of the text of length m in O(m+log^εn) time. For a text of length n on an alphabet such that , our new index occupies only bits where is the order-0 entropy of the text. Especially for ε=1 the size is bits. Therefore the index will be smaller than the text, which means we can perform fast queries from compressed texts.     

Spatiotemporal chaos and noise

Low-dimensional chaotic dynamical systems can exhibit many characteristic properties of stochastic systems, such as broad Fourier spectra. They are distinguishable from stochastic processes through finite values for their dimension, Lyapunov exponents, and Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. We discuss how these characteristic observables are modified in spatiotemporal chaotic systems like. coupled map lattices. We analyze with the help of Lyapunov concepts how the stochastic limit is approached and how these properties can be observed directly through local dimension measurements from reconstructed time series. Finally, we discuss the interaction of spatiotemporal attractors with external noise and possible connections to problems of pattern selection and stability.     

On the universality of nonthermal electron acceleration due to quasi-turbulent wakefields

Nonthermal acceleration of relativistic electrons in a wakefield induced by large amplitude light waves is discussed. It is considered that large amplitude light waves are excited as the precursor waves in the upstream of relativistic perpendicular shocks in the universe, and that the wakefield is excited by the light ponderomotive force. Thus, the wakefield acceleration is possible in the astrophysical circumstances. We model such shock environments in a laboratory plasma by substituting an intense laser pulse for the large amplitude light waves. By performing 2-D particle-in-cell simulations, we discuss the properties of the wakefield acceleration in various laser and plasma conditions. With the relativistic intensities of the laser pulses, the electrons are nonthermally accelerated by the wakefield. When the pulse length and the spot size are comparable to the electron inertial scale, the energy distribution functions of the electrons can be monoenergetic. On the other hand, when the pulse spatial scales are much larger than the electron inertial scale, which occurs in the case of the shock precursor light waves, the distribution functions are universally represented by power law spectra with an index of 2, independent of the laser intensity, the plasma density, and the laser pulse size.     

A novel chip device based on wired capillary packed with high performance polymer-based monolith for HPLC: reproducibility in preparation processes to obtain long columns.

This report describes the development of novel wired chip devices for mu-HPLC analyses. The monolithic capillary column to be wired was prepared using a tri-functional epoxy monomer, tris(2,3-epoxypropyl)isocyanurate with a diamine, 4-[(4-aminocyclohexyl)methyl]cyclohexylamine. The prepared column was evaluated by SEM observation of the sectional structure of column and micro-HPLC. In addition, the reproducibility in the preparation of long capillary columns having nearly 1 m length was extensively examined for applications of novel wired chip devices. The authors demonstrated that the monolithic structure of the prepared long capillary could be finely controlled under the strictly maintained operational conditions and thus the relative standard deviation (RSD) of the column properties such as the number of theoretical plates, retention factor, and permeability could be well controlled to become less than 10%. Furthermore, the wired chip device column showed that its high performance was kept even after chip preparation.     

Crystal growth of superconductive PrBa2Cu3O7−y

Superconductive PrBa₂Cu₃O_7−y (Pr123) crystals have been grown successfully by the travelling-solvent floating-zone (TSFZ) method using 3.7–5.8% PrO, 27–37% BaO, and 60–69% CuO composition solution with the 0.1–0.4% oxygen mixed argon gas atmosphere. The grown crystals have been identified to be Pr123 by a precession camera, X-ray powder diffractions and scanning electron microscopy–X-ray energy dispersion spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). Some portion of the grown TSFZ crystal boules show bulk superconductivity below about 80 K after annealing in oxygen.     

Analysis of ice water by the thermally stimulated depolarized current (TSDC) method.

The thermally stimulated depolarized current and temperature profiles (TSDC analysis) on iced water was proved to be an effective tool for the qualitative evaluation of various water samples, each having an independent relaxation process, brought about by a pure dipolar orientation. The method proved to be applicable to different kinds of water samples used in the experiment and tap-water samples from different suppliers. Five main peaks (A to E, in the order of increasing temperature) were observed, of which two peaks (B and D) were found for the first time. The appearance of multiple peaks suggested the existence of multi-states of the hydrogen bond, cleaved by the TSDC process. The TSDC profiles were quite reproducible when the water samples contained practically no cations. A separate addition of each cation at a low concentration level revealed that a cation with a smaller ionic radius shifted peak A to a higher temperature. For ice of tap water, which contained relatively higher amount of cations, the TSDC profiles were quite different in shape compared with the standard ice-water samples (shift of peaks A - D to higher temperature, and a strong increase in the current strength of peaks B - E). However, it was still possible to tell from which districts the water samples were supplied.