Raman spectroscopy of synthetic organic pigments used in 20th century works of art

Raman microscopy allows a non‐destructive characterisation of inorganic and organic painting materials such as pigments and organic dyestuffs. The objectives of this study are the more recent organic pigments typically present in paintings and other art works from the 20th century. More than 20 organic synthetic pigments from different chemical classes could be identified by Raman spectroscopy using different excitation wavelengths (457.9, 476.5, 487.9, 514.5, 632.8, and 1064 nm). To evaluate the performance for real paint samples, varying paint mixtures of the Hansa Yellow pigment PY 3 and the binding medium Mowilith, a polyvinyl acetate (PVAC) compound, were characterised; PY 3 was determined at a 1 wt% level in the binder. In addition, commercial tube paints containing the quinacridone violet PV 19 were studied. The pigment was clearly identified in all of these more complex oil and acrylic paints. Finally, alizarin (PR 83) and a green copper phthalocyanine pigment (PG 7) could unambiguously be identified by Raman microscopy in the painting ‘Woman with mandolin in yellow and red’ of Max Beckmann dating 1950. The discovery of a red naphthol AS pigment by Raman spectroscopy in a sample from the ‘Three field workers’ by Georg Baselitz (1964/1965) demonstrated that in some cases complementary chromatographic methods are needed for a comprehensive identification of the organic pigments. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Discovery of a nuclear isomer in 65Fe with penning trap mass spectrometry

A new long-lived isomeric state in (65)Fe has been discovered with Penning trap mass spectrometry and high-precision mass measurements of the neutron-rich isotopes (63-65)Fe and (64-66)Co have been performed with the Low-Energy Beam and Ion Trap Facility at the NSCL. For the new isomer in (65)Fe an excitation energy of 402(5) keV has been determined from the measured mass difference between the isomeric and ground states. The mass uncertainties of all isotopes have been reduced by a factor of 10-100 compared to previous results. In the case of (64)Co the previous mass value was found to deviate by about 5 standard deviations from the new measurement.     

Millimeter wave monolithic schottky diode imaging arrays

Planar Schottky diodes are integrated with bow-tie antennas to form a one-dimensional array. The energy is focused onto the antennas through a silicon lens placed on the back of the gallium-arsenide substrate. A polystyrene cap on the silicon lens reduces the reflection loss. A self-aligning process with proton isolation has been developed to make the planar Schottky diodes with a 1.1-THz zero-bias cutoff frequency. The antenna coupling efficiency and imaging properties of the system are studied by video detection measurements at 94 GHz. As a heterodyne receiver, a double-sideband mixer conversion loss of 11.2 dB and noise temperature of 3770°K have been achieved at a local oscillator frequency of 91 GHz. Of this loss, 6.2 dB is attributed to the optical system and the antenna.     

Ersatz der Podbielniak-Destillation durch eine Kombination von Graschromatographie und Gravimetrie

Zusammenfassung An Stelle der Podbielniak-Analyse für Gasproben, die neben Inertgasen und leichten Kohlenwasserstoffen auch C₅- und höhere Kohlenwasserstoffe enthalten, wird ein neues Verfahren vorgeschlagen. Die Inertgase und leichten Kohlenwasserstoffe werden wie üblich gaschromatographisch bestimmt. Zusätzlich trennt man aus einer zweiten Probe gaschromatographisch die leichten Anteile ab, spült durch Umkehr der Trägergasrichtung die Summe der schweren Kohlenwasserstoffe wieder aus der Säule und bestimmt ihre Menge durch Wägung.     

Uniform asymptotic regularity for Mann iterates

In Numer. Funct. Anal. Optim. 22 (2001) 641-656, we obtained an effective quantitative analysis of a theorem due to Borwein, Reich, and Shafrir on the asymptotic behavior of general Krasnoselski-Mann iterations for nonexpansive self-mappings of convex sets C in arbitrary normed spaces. We used this result to obtain a new strong uniform version of Ishikawa's theorem for bounded C. In this paper we give a qualitative improvement of our result in the unbounded case and prove the uniformity result for the bounded case under the weaker assumption that C contains a point x whose Krasnoselski-Mann iteration (x_k) is bounded. We also consider more general iterations for which asymptotic regularity is known only for uniformly convex spaces (Groetsch). We give uniform effective bounds for (an extension of) Groetsch's theorem which generalize previous results by Kirk, Martinez-Yanez, and the author.     

What is the Rees algebra of a module?

In this paper we show that the Rees algebra can be made into a functor on modules over a ring in a way that extends its classical definition for ideals. The Rees algebra of a module may be computed in terms of a ``maximal' map from to a free module as the image of the map induced by on symmetric algebras. We show that the analytic spread and reductions of can be determined from any embedding of into a free module, and in characteristic 0--but not in positive characteristic!--the Rees algebra itself can be computed from any such embedding.

     

The μSR facilities at PSI

TheSR Facility Instruments presently available at PSI and the envisaged medium- and long-term developments are presented. The plans focus on further upgrades of the existing instruments and the development of new techniques using the very high fluxes becoming available at PSI, in particular the setup of a beamline with a fast kicker for muons on request (MORE) and the development of very low energy muon beams.