A note on a local effect at the Schwarzschild sphere

Passage of the Schwarzschild radius is shown to be locally measurable by a sign change in a certain scalar. In the Kerr solution this scalar changes sign at the stationary limit. This is an example of the use of a coordinate-invariant method, based on the curvature tensor and a finite number of its covariant derivatives, for investigating gravitational fields.     

Recent advances in bimetallic electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction: design principles,structure-function relations and active phase elucidation

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Variations in Physicochemical Properties and Bioconversion Efficiency of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ulva lactuca</Emphasis> Polysaccharides After Different Biomass Pretreatment Techniques

Green macroalgae are an abundant and undervalued biomass with a specific cell wall structure. In this context, different pretreatments, namely ethanol organosolv (Org), alkaline, liquid hot water (LHW), and ionic liquid (IL) pretreatments, were applied to the green macroalgae Ulva lactuca biomass and then evaluated. Their effects on chemical composition, biomass crystallinity, enzymatic digestibility, and theoretical ethanol potential were studied. The chemical composition analysis showed that the Org and LHW pretreatments allowed the highest glucan recovery (80.8 ± 3.6 and 62.9 ± 4.4 g/100 g DM, respectively) with ulvan (80.0 and 99.1%) and hemicellulose (55.0 and 42.3%) removal. These findings were in agreement with both thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy results that confirm significant structural changes of the pretreated biomasses. It was found that the employed pretreatments did not significantly affect the cellulose crystallinity; however, they both increased the whole crystallinity and the enzymatic digestibility. This later reached 97.5% in the case of LHW pretreatment. Our results showed high efficiency saccharification of Ulva lactuca biomass that will constitute the key step of the implementation of a biorefinery process.     

Onf-vectors and Betti numbers of multicomplexes

A multicomplexM is a collection of monomials closed under divisibility. For suchM we construct a cell complex M whosei-dimensional cells are in bijection with thef _i monomials ofM of degreei+1. The bijection is such that the inclusion relation of cells corresponds to divisibility of monomials. We then study relations between the numbersf _i and the Betti numbers of M. For squarefree monomials the construction specializes to the standard geometric realization of a simplicial complex.This work was supported by the Mittag-Leffler Institute during the Combinatorial Year program 1991–92. The second author also acknowledges support from the Serbian Science Foundation, Grant No. 0401D.     

Unitarity bounds for 4-fermion contact interactions

In this paper we consider the effect of unitarity bounds s_bs(E₁+E₂) _cms ² for the recently proposed types of nonderivative 4-fermion contact interactions. To this purpose we decompose the helicity amplitudes at c.m.s. into partial waves. The bounds are defined to hold for all reaction channels due to the same type of contact interaction. We find s_b=4/. Here is the coupling constant. The factor depends on the type of coupling and on the different cases to identify the fermions. It ranges from 1/3 to 4.     

The Flexibility of SIMPSON and SIMMOL for Numerical Simulations in Solid-and Liquid-State NMR Spectroscopy

 Addressing the need for numerical simulations in the design and interpretation of advanced solid- and liquid-state NMR experiments, we present a number of novel features for numerical simulations based on the SIMPSON and SIMMOL open source software packages. Major attention is devoted to the flexibility of these Tcl-interfaced programs for numerical simulation of NMR experiments being complicated by demands for efficient powder averaging, large spin systems, and multiple-pulse rf irradiation. These features are exemplified by fast simulation of second-order quadrupolar powder patterns using crystallite interpolation, analysis of rotary resonance triple-quantum excitation for quadrupolar nuclei, iterative fitting of MQ-MAS spectra by combination of SIMPSON and MINUIT, simulation of multiple-dimensional PISEMA-type correlation experiments for macroscopically oriented membrane proteins, simulation of Hartman-Hahn polarization transfers in liquid-state NMR, and visualization of the spin evolution under complex composite broad-band excitation pulses.     

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering imaging of single living lymphocytes with multivariate evaluation

This paper is aimed to show the possibility to determine individual organic compounds introduced into single living cells with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Surface enhancement was achieved with gold colloids that were allowed to diffuse into lymphocytes. An introduced analyte, rhodamine 6G, could be imaged together with for example nucleotides and amino acids of the cell. Multivariate evaluation of surface-enhanced Raman images proved to be a powerful tool for the separation of spectral information of various intracellular components. The principal component analysis (PCA) enabled identification of spectra containing different chemical information and separation of the spectral contribution of rhodamine 6G from the complex cellular matrix.     

Multispectral optical imaging combined in situ with XPS or ToFSIMS and principal component analysis

All X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF‐SIMS) instruments have optical cameras to image the specimen under analysis, and often to image the sample holder as it enters the system too. These cameras help the user find the appropriate points for analysis of specimens. However they seldom give as good images as stand‐alone bench optical microscopes, because of the limited geometry, source/analyser solid angle and ultra‐high‐vacuum (UHV) design compromises. This often means that the images displayed to the user necessarily have low contrast, low resolution and poor depth‐of‐field. To help identify the different regions of the samples present we have found it useful to perform multispectral imaging by illuminating the sample with narrow‐wavelength‐range light emitting diodes (LEDs). By taking an image under the illumination of these LEDs in turn, each at a successively longer wavelength, one can build up a set of registered images that contain more information than a simple Red–Green–Blue image under white‐light illumination. We show that this type of multispectral imaging is easy and inexpensive to fit to common XPS and ToF‐SIMS instruments, using LEDs that are widely available. In our system we typically use 14 LEDs including one emitting in the ultraviolet (so as to allow fluorescent imaging) and three in the near infra‐red. The design considerations of this system are discussed in detail, including the design of the drive and control electronics, and three practical examples are presented where this multispectral imaging was extremely useful. Copyright © 2016 The Authors Surface and Interface Analysis Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.