Anionic graft polymerization of propylene sulfide on cellulose. II. Absorption of iodine,silver, and mercury on the graft polymers

The adsorption of iodine, silver nitrate, and mercuric chloride by cellulosic membranes grafted with polypropylene sulfide was investigated. It was found that the grafted polypropylene sulfide adsorbed iodine by complexation from aqueous solution or from gaseous phase. Adsorption from water led to the formation of a complex with molar ratio of I₂ to propylene sulfide units of 1, and that while the complex formed from gaseous iodine had a molar ratio I₂ to propylene sulfide approaching 2. Most of the sulfide groups participated in complexation. It was found that the complexation of the polysulfide was accompanied by degradation which was attributed to halogenation of the polysulfide at the tertiary carbon atoms. The iodine complex was more stable in water than in organic solvents, where most of the iodine was desorbed. The graft polymers adsorbed also by complexation silver nitrate and mercuric chloride. Adsorption could be described by a Freundlich type isotherm. At low concentrations most of the silver nitrate present in solution was adsorbed.     

Decompositions of partially ordered sets into chains and antichains of given size

Every partially ordered set P on at least (1+o(1))n ³ elements can be decomposed into subposets of size n that are almost chains or antichains. This lower bound on P is asymptotically best possible. Similar results are presented for other types of combinatorial structures.Research supported in part by the AKA Research Fund of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, grant 1-3-86-264.     

Ultra-performance liquid chromatographic analysis of amino acids in protein hydrolysates using an automated pre-column derivatisation method

In the present study, the changeover from the Pico.Tag HPLC method to the AccQ.Tag(ultra) UPLC method for the analysis of amino acids in casein and bovine serum albumine hydrolysates is described. The total chromatographic run time of the AccQ.Tag(ultra) UPLC method was only 40% of the time required for the Pico.Tag HPLC method. Quantitative results of both methods for casein and bovine serum albumine hydrolysates compared fairly well. The derivatisation protocol for the formation of AQC derivatives of amino acids was automated using a Gilson Model 215 liquid handler. Comparison of the manual derivatisation protocol with the automated protocol showed lower coefficients of variation for the latter. Combination of the AccQ.Tag(ultra) UPLC method and automated derivatisation resulted in improved throughput compared to the Pico.Tag HPLC method.     

On the effectiveness of projection methods for convex feasibility problems with linear inequality constraints

The effectiveness of projection methods for solving systems of linear inequalities is investigated. It is shown that they often have a computational advantage over alternatives that have been proposed for solving the same problem and that this makes them successful in many real-world applications. This is supported by experimental evidence provided in this paper on problems of various sizes (up to tens of thousands of unknowns satisfying up to hundreds of thousands of constraints) and by a discussion of the demonstrated efficacy of projection methods in numerous scientific publications and commercial patents (dealing with problems that can have over a billion unknowns and a similar number of constraints).     

A blind policy for equalizing cumulative idleness

We consider a system with a single queue and multiple server pools of heterogeneous exponential servers. The system operates under a policy that always routes a job to the pool with longest cumulative idleness among pools with available servers, in an attempt to achieve fairness toward servers. It is easy to find examples of a system with a fixed number of servers, for which fairness is not achieved by this policy in any reasonable sense. Our main result shows that in the many-server regime of Halfin and Whitt, the policy does attain equalization of cumulative idleness, and that the equalization time, defined within any given precision level, remains bounded in the limit. An important feature of this policy is that it acts ‘blindly’, in that it requires no information on the service or arrival rates.     

Iterative Averaging of Entropic Projections for Solving Stochastic Convex Feasibility Problems

The problem considered in this paper is that of finding a point which iscommon to almost all the members of a measurable family of closed convexsubsets of R₊₊ ⁿ , provided that such a point exists.The main results show that this problem can be solved by an iterative methodessentially based on averaging at each step the Bregman projections withrespect to f(x)=_i=1 ⁿx_i· ln x_i ofthe current iterate onto the given sets.     

The complexity of advice‐giving

Advice‐giving about personal problems is a common form of human interaction. However, an open question is whether there is an abstract and general logic that explains how advice‐giving works. In this study, we addressed this question from the perspective of dynamical systems. We measured the nonlinear dynamics of advice‐giving by using recurrence quantification analysis. Analyzing 600 texts of request for advice and the advice given, our results uncover a typical logic of advice‐giving, and suggest that advice‐giving may be understood as a dynamic manipulation of perspective‐taking. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 2009     

Silicon–air batteries

A new “metal”–air battery based on silicon–oxygen couple is described. Silicon–air battery employing EMI·2.3HF·F room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) as an electrolyte and highly-doped silicon wafers as anodes (fuels) has an undetectable self-discharge rate and high tolerance to the environment (extreme moisture/dry conditions). Such a battery yields an effectively infinite shelf life with an average working voltage of 1–1.2 V. Silicon–air battery can support relatively high current densities (up to 0.3 mA/cm²) drawn from flat polished silicon wafers anodes. Such batteries may find immediate applications, as they can provide an internal, built-in autonomous and self sustained energy source.     

Conducting polyfurans by electropolymerization of oligofurans

Polyfurans have never been established as useful conjugated polymers, as previously they were considered to be inherently unstable and poorly conductive. Here, we show the preparation of stable and conducting polyfuran films by electropolymerization of a series of oligofurans of different chain lengths substituted with alkyl groups. The polyfuran films show good conductivity in the order of 1 S cm^–1, good environmental and electrochemical stabilities, very smooth morphologies (roughness 1–5 nm), long effective conjugation lengths, well-defined spectroelectrochemistry and electro-optical switching (in the Vis-NIR region), and have optical band-gaps in the range of 2.2–2.3 eV. A low oxidation potential needed for polymerization of oligofurans (compared to furan) is a key factor in achievement of improved properties of polyfurans reported in this work. DFT calculations and experiments show that polyfurans are much more rigid than polythiophenes, and alkyl substitution does not disturb backbone planarity and conjugation. The obtained properties of polyfuran films are similar or superior to the properties of electrochemically prepared poly(oligothiophene)s under similar conditions.