Aqueous room temperature synthesis of cobalt and zinc sodalite zeolitic imidizolate frameworks

Sodalite zeolitic imidazolate frameworks containing Co (ZIF-67) and Zn (ZIF-8) were synthesized at room temperature under aqueous conditions in 10 min. A trialkylamine deprotonated the 2-methylimidazole ligand and nucleated the frameworks. Furthermore, the ligand acted as a structure directing agent in place of an organic solvent.     

RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES AND APPLICATIONS OF MESQUITE TREE (PROSOPIS JULIFLORA) GUM. 3. THE INFLUENCE OF MESQUITE GUM OH THE INTERFACIAL TENSION BETWEEN OIL AND WATER

The influence of mesquite gum on the interfacial tension between liquid paraffin and distilled water has been studied as a function of gum concentration, pH, and added NaCl or CaCl₂. The time dependence of the reduction in interfacial tension was influenced by all three variables. Diffusion to the oil-water interface was the dominant factor in the initial decrease of interfacial tension when low mesquite gum concentrations were used. Reconformation of molecules adsorbed at the oil-water interface controlled the reduction in interfacial tension at longer times when using more concentrated gum solutions.     

Minimal blocking sets in finite planes

A result on enclosed (k,n)-arcs in PG(2,q) is used to characterise all minimal blocking sets of sizes =q +n in PG(2,q) with at least twon-secants. This also permits a slight extension of the bounds on blocking sets established by Blokhuis and Brouwer.     

Benchmarking with quality-adjusted DEA (Q-DEA) to seek lower-cost high-quality service: Evidence from a U.S.bank application

Benchmarking is a widely cited method to identify and adopt best-practices as a means to improve performance. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has been demonstrated to be a powerful benchmarking methodology for situations where multiple inputs and outputs need to be assessed to identify best-practices and improve productivity in organizations. Most DEA benchmarking studies have excluded quality, even in service-sector applications such as health care where quality is a key element of performance. This limits the practical value of DEA in organizations where maintaining and improving service quality is critical to achieving performance objectives. In this paper, alternative methods incorporating quality in DEA benchmarking are demonstrated and evaluated. It is shown that simply treating the quality measures as DEA outputs does not help in discriminating the performance. Thus, the current study presents a new, more sensitive, quality-adjusted DEA (Q-DEA), which effectively deals with quality measures in benchmarking. We report the results of applying Q-DEA to a U.S. bank's 200-branch network that required a method for benchmarking to help manage operating costs and service quality. Q-DEA findings helped the bank achieve cost savings and improved operations while preserving service quality, a dimension critical to its mission. New insights about ways to improve branch operations based on the best-practice (high-quality low-cost) benchmarks identified with Q-DEA are also described in the paper. This demonstrates the practical need and potential benefits of Q-DEA and its efficacy in one application, and also suggests the need for further research on measuring and incorporating quality into DEA benchmarking. The review process of this paper was handled by the Edit-in-Chief Peter Hammer.