Efficient production of reference materials of hazardous organics using smart calibration by nuclear magnetic resonance

The accurate quantification of pesticide residues in food is an important factor in assuring the quality of life of our citizens. In general, chromatographic methods are used, which require certified reference materials (CRMs) for each analyte of interest for accurate quantitative analysis. Recently, regulation of pesticides in food, limiting the positive maximum residue (positive list system) has been brought into effect in Japan. Furthermore, ISO/IEC 17025 requires calibration and testing laboratories to program calibrations and measurements traceable to the International System of Units (SI). Accordingly, these laboratories need a suite of CRMs that are traceable to the SI. In order to address these requirements for every analyte of interest in an efficient manner, a new approach to producing SI traceable CRMs is required. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used widely in chemical analysis. One of the well known characteristics of NMR is the proportional relationship between peak area and the number of nuclei contributing to the peak. If accurate relative intensities of peak areas are obtained, this provides an attractive quantitative tool for organic compounds. The area of a signal from an analyte can be measured with respect to another signal originating from a comparator that has been added to the sample solution. The chosen comparator should not react with the analyte or resonate at any chemical shift similar to that of the analyte. This enables us to produce SI traceable CRMs more effectively. In this paper, we demonstrate a new approach for producing CRMs for pesticides using quantitative NMR??an SI traceable quantitative technique.     

Thermal desorption of N2 from (N2 + O2) coadsorbed on polycrystalline rhenium surfaces

The coadsorption of ¹⁵N₂ and O₂ on polycrystalline rhenium filament has been studied by thermal desorption mass spectroscopy. The sample was exposed to a mixture of ¹⁵N₂ and O₂ with various concentrations of ¹⁵N₂ at room temperature. It is suggested that NO on Re at low coverage is dissociative and the bonding strength of nitrogen on Re is weakened by the coadsorption with oxygen atoms.     

A polynomial time algorithm for a chance-constrained single machine scheduling problem

This paper gives an O(n√nlog³n) time algorithm for the chance-constrained sequencing problem on a single machine, where n is the number of jobs and the objective is to minimize the number of jobs which are early with probability not smaller than α (a given constant) against the common due time d.     

The number of additional variables required for the integer programming formulation

It is known that a minimization problem having a finite feasible region with k elements can be formulated as an integer programming problem by introducing at most [log₂k] additional integer variables. In this note, we show that this bound is best possible in the sense that some minimization problem actually requires [log₂k] additional variables.     

Adsorption properties and photocatalytic activity of TiO2 and La-doped TiO2

Photocatalysts of TiO₂ and La-doped TiO₂ were prepared by calcining the pure TiO₂ sols and the sols mixed with La(NO₃)₃⋅6H₂O at 873 K, respectively. These photocatalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherms measurement. As results, the BET surface area, pore diameter, mesopore volume and micropore volume slightly increased, while the crystallite size and the phase structure were little affected by lanthanum doping. The equilibrium adsorption of methylene blue (MB) on the photocatalysts were measured in a dark room. The adsorption isotherms were confirmed to fit to the Langmuir theory. Photocatalytic activities of the photocatalysts were studied by employing the photocatalytic degradation of MB in water and degradation of acetaldehyde in air under UV-irradiation using a black light. Kinetic analysis revealed that the rate controlling steps could be the surface reaction of the adsorbed MB on the catalyst surface for MB degradation and the reaction of adsorbed acetaldehyde with the gaseous acetaldehyde for degradation of acetaldehyde, respectively.     

氟催化废弃硅基还原剂与CO2还原转化反应

CO2是最重要的可再生碳源之一.为了将CO2转化为有用的有机化合物,我们研究了二种模型硅基"废"材料—乙硅烷和硅粉的反应活性.在这些反应中,氟盐的催化活性最高,在常压、在质子源水和硅基还原剂的存在下,CO2可转化为甲酸.原位NMR和动力学分析表明,含氢硅烷和五配位的硅物种分别是反应中间物和活性物种.     

New spline basis functions for sampling approximations

We describe a method of constructing a new kind of splines with compact support on . These basis functions consisting of a linear combination of the cardinal B-splines of mixed orders enable us to achieve simultaneously a good sampling approximation and an interpolation of any smooth function.