Carbon-mineral adsorbents prepared by pyrolysis of waste materials in the presence of tetrachloromethane

Natural bentonite spent in the process of plant oil bleaching was used as an initial material for preparation of carbon-mineral adsorbents. The spent bleaching earth was treated using four procedures: T (thermal treatment); H (hydrothermal treatment); C (thermal treatment with addition of CCl4 vapor); M (modification of porous structure). Raw bentonite, RB (raw bleaching earth), and carbon materials prepared using plant oil were compared. The physicochemical characteristics of the adsorbents were determined using different methods: nitrogen adsorption/desorption, XRD, TEM, and MS-TPD. Carbon-mineral adsorbents contain from 5.23 to 19.92% C (w/w) and carbon adsorbents include from 84.2 to 91.18% C (w/w). Parallel processes of organic substance carbonization, porous structure modification, sublimation or evaporation of metal chlorides, and removal of hydrogen chloride take place during pyrolysis of waste mineral materials in the CCl4 atmosphere.     

Shift-Type Properties of Commuting,Completely Non Doubly Commuting Pairs of Isometries

Pairs (V, V′) of commuting, completely non doubly commuting isometries are studied. We show, that the space of the minimal unitary extension of V (denoted by U) is a closed linear span of subspaces reducing U to bilateral shifts. Moreover, the restriction of V′ to the maximal subspace reducing V to a unitary operator is a unilateral shift. We also get a new hyperreducing decomposition of a single isometry with respect to its wandering vectors which strongly corresponds with Lebesgue decomposition.     

Freezing in resonance structures for better packing: XeF2 becomes (XeF+)(F-) at large compression

Recent high-pressure experiments conducted on xenon difluoride (XeF(2)) suggested that this compound undergoes several phase transitions up to 100 GPa, becoming metallic above 70 GPa. In this theoretical study, in contrast to experiment, we find that the ambient pressure molecular structure of xenon difluoride, of I4/mmm symmetry, remains the most stable one up to 105 GPa. In our computations, the structures suggested from experiment have either much higher enthalpies than the I4/mmm structure or converge to that structure upon geometry optimization. We discuss these discrepancies between experiment and calculation and point to an alternative interpretation of the measured cell vectors of XeF(2) at high pressure. At pressures exceeding those studied experimentally, above 105 GPa, the I4/mmm structure transforms to one of Pnma symmetry. The Pnma phase contains bent FXeF molecules, with unequal Xe-F distances, and begins to bring other fluorines into the coordination sphere of the Xe. Further compression of this structure up to 200 GPa essentially results in self-dissociation of XeF(2) into an ionic solid (i.e., [XeF](+)F(-)), similar to what is observed for nitrous oxide (N(2)O) at high pressure.     

Current induced resistance change of magnetic tunnel junctions with ultra-thin MgO tunnel barriers

Ultra-thin magnetic tunnel junctions with low resistive MgO tunnel barriers are prepared to examine their stability under large current stress. The devices show magnetoresistance ratios of up to 110% and an area resistance product of down to . If a large current is applied, a reversible resistance change is observed, which can be attributed to two different processes during stressing and one relaxation process afterwards. Here, we analyze the time dependence of the resistance and use a simple model to explain the observed behavior. The explanation is further supported by numerical fits to the data in order to quantify the timescales of the involved phenomena.     

Possible schemes of photoassociation processes in the KLi molecule with newly calculated potential energy curves

We present four promising schemes for photoassociative formation of KLi molecule in its ground electronic state. Analysis is based on newly calculated adiabatic potentials supported by transition dipole moments and Franck-Condon factors.     

Experimental Demonstration of SCM-PON Monitoring with Baseband Embedded OTDR

The combination of subcarrier multiplexing and passive optical networks can provide an efficient and cost-effective solution for fiber and wireless convergence in access networks. Moreover, to reduce operational expenditures, a reliable monitoring technique should provide in-service evaluation of the physical layer. Here, we perform the experimental demonstration of an SCM-PON system with baseband embedded optical time-domain reflectometer monitoring. Different modulation formats were tested to evaluate the penalty generated by the monitoring system. Based on the long-term evolution downlink test model (E-TM 3.1), our results show negligible power penalty while achieving a ~12-dB dynamic range with 10-m spatial resolution.     

Managing Excess Lead Iodide with Functionalized Oxo-Graphene Nanosheets for Stable Perovskite Solar Cells

Stability issues could prevent lead halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) from commercialization despite it having a comparable power conversion efficiency (PCE) to silicon solar cells. Overcoming drawbacks affecting their long-term stability is gaining incremental importance. Excess lead iodide (PbI₂) causes perovskite degradation, although it aids in crystal growth and defect passivation. Herein, we synthesized functionalized oxo-graphene nanosheets (Dec-oxoG NSs) to effectively manage the excess PbI₂. Dec-oxoG NSs provide anchoring sites to bind the excess PbI₂ and passivate perovskite grain boundaries, thereby reducing charge recombination loss and significantly boosting the extraction of free electrons. The inclusion of Dec-oxoG NSs leads to a PCE of 23.7 % in inverted (p-i-n) PSCs. The devices retain 93.8 % of their initial efficiency after 1,000 hours of tracking at maximum power points under continuous one-sun illumination and exhibit high stability under thermal and ambient conditions.     

A likelihood ratio model for the determination of the geographical origin of olive oil

Food fraud or food adulteration may be of forensic interest for instance in the case of suspected deliberate mislabeling. On account of its potential health benefits and nutritional qualities, geographical origin determination of olive oil might be of special interest. The use of a likelihood ratio (LR) model has certain advantages in contrast to typical chemometric methods because the LR model takes into account the information about the sample rarity in a relevant population. Such properties are of particular interest to forensic scientists and therefore it has been the aim of this study to examine the issue of olive oil classification with the use of different LR models and their pertinence under selected data pre-processing methods (logarithm based data transformations) and feature selection technique. This was carried out on data describing 572 Italian olive oil samples characterised by the content of 8 fatty acids in the lipid fraction. Three classification problems related to three regions of Italy (South, North and Sardinia) have been considered with the use of LR models. The correct classification rate and empirical cross entropy were taken into account as a measure of performance of each model. The application of LR models in determining the geographical origin of olive oil has proven to be satisfactorily useful for the considered issues analysed in terms of many variants of data pre-processing since the rates of correct classifications were close to 100% and considerable reduction of information loss was observed. The work also presents a comparative study of the performance of the linear discriminant analysis in considered classification problems. An approach to the choice of the value of the smoothing parameter is highlighted for the kernel density estimation based LR models as well.