Photochemical synthesis of perfluoropolyether (PFPE) nanocomposites containing PFPE oligomer stabilized magnetite nanoparticles

Magnetite nanoparticles were synthesized and their post-synthesis surface modification was carried out with triethoxy terminated perfluoropolyether (PFPE) oligomers. The surface-treated nanoparticles were then dispersed in a UV-curable difunctional methacrylic PFPE oligomer. Thin films prepared from the resulting stable suspensions were photopolymerized. The obtained nanocomposites showed good distribution of the surface-treated magnetite nanoparticles in the polymer matrix. The surface treatment of magnetite nanoparticles with perfluoropolyether oligomers thus was found to be effective in preventing nanoparticle segregation and aggregation, ensuring therefore an increased compatibility with the PFPE matrix.     

Comparison of Different Sorbents in the QuEChERS Method for the Determination of Pesticide Residues in Strawberries by LC–MS/MS

A comparison of sample preparation based on the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS) method for analysis of pesticide residues in strawberries by LC–MS/MS was made using different sorbents in the clean-up by dispersive solid-phase extraction (d-SPE). Some sorbents were laboratory-made, prepared by depositing poly(methyloctadecylsiloxane) (PMODS), poly(methyloctylsiloxane) (PMOS), aminopropyl-terminated poly(dimethylsiloxane) (APPS) and copolymer of (52–48 %)dimethyl-(48–52 %)methylphenyl-siloxane (DMMPS) onto silica supports. The commercial sorbent primary–secondary amine (PSA) and mixtures of two sorbents, primary–secondary amine and poly(methyloctadecylsiloxane), were also used in the experiments. The performances of the sorbents were evaluated by parameters such as color of the final extract, gravimetric measurement, recovery and matrix effect at the fortification level of 100 ng g^?1 of the pesticide mixture in strawberries. The recoveries were in the range 70–120 %, and the RSD values were lower than 20 % for most of the pesticides using the modified QuEChERS method with different sorbents in the clean-up step. The strawberry extracts were cleaned more efficiently with the use of primary–secondary amine sorbent, which has the function of removing sugars, organic acids and especially pigments. The sample preparation method was efficient, and LC–MS/MS determination was optimal because of high selectivity and good detectivity for the multiresidue analyses.     

Stereospecific Couplings of Secondary and Tertiary Boronic Esters

This Minireview highlights advances in the Suzuki–Miyaura cross‐coupling of secondary boron reagents for the creation of C? C bonds with control of stereochemistry. It also includes non‐transition‐metal coupling of secondary and tertiary boronic esters to electron‐rich aromatics.     

Optimizing X‐ray mirror thermal performance using matched profile cooling

To cover a large photon energy range, the length of an X‐ray mirror is often longer than the beam footprint length for much of the applicable energy range. To limit thermal deformation of such a water‐cooled X‐ray mirror, a technique using side cooling with a cooled length shorter than the beam footprint length is proposed. This cooling length can be optimized by using finite‐element analysis. For the Kirkpatrick–Baez (KB) mirrors at LCLS‐II, the thermal deformation can be reduced by a factor of up to 30, compared with full‐length cooling. Furthermore, a second, alternative technique, based on a similar principle is presented: using a long, single‐length cooling block on each side of the mirror and adding electric heaters between the cooling blocks and the mirror substrate. The electric heaters consist of a number of cells, located along the mirror length. The total effective length of the electric heater can then be adjusted by choosing which cells to energize, using electric power supplies. The residual height error can be minimized to 0.02 nm RMS by using optimal heater parameters (length and power density). Compared with a case without heaters, this residual height error is reduced by a factor of up to 45. The residual height error in the LCLS‐II KB mirrors, due to free‐electron laser beam heat load, can be reduced by a factor of ～11 below the requirement. The proposed techniques are also effective in reducing thermal slope errors and are, therefore, applicable to white beam mirrors in synchrotron radiation beamlines.     

Basin boundaries and focal points in a map coming from Bairstow's method

This paper is devoted to the study of the global dynamical properties of a two-dimensional noninvertible map, with a denominator which can vanish, obtained by applying Bairstow's method to a cubic polynomial. It is shown that the complicated structure of the basins of attraction of the fixed points is due to the existence of singularities such as sets of nondefinition, focal points, and prefocal curves, which are specific to maps with a vanishing denominator, and have been recently introduced in the literature. Some global bifurcations that change the qualitative structure of the basin boundaries, are explained in terms of contacts among these singularities. The techniques used in this paper put in evidence some new dynamic behaviors and bifurcations, which are peculiar of maps with denominator; hence they can be applied to the analysis of other classes of maps coming from iterative algorithms (based on Newton's method, or others). (c) 1999 American Institute of Physics.     

A Genetic/Tabu Thresholding Hybrid Algorithm for the Process Allocation Problem

In this paper we describe an hybrid heuristic approach, which combines Genetic Algorithms and Tabu Thresholding, for the static allocation of interacting processes onto a parallel target system, where the number of processes is greater than the number of available processors. This problem is known to be NP-hard and finds many practical applications, given the increasing diffusion of distributed and parallel computing systems.The algorithm faces infeasibilities due to processors overload by incorporating them into the objective function and by adapting the mutation operator. Global search is performed on the set of local optima obtained by a repair search operator based on a Tabu Thresholding procedure.Extensive computational testing on randomly generated instances with up to 100 processes characterized by different target network topologies with 4 to 25 processors, shows that the algorithm favorably compares with other approaches from the literature.The proposed approach has also been extended to the allocation of parallel objects and classes, where an additional co-residence constraint between each parallel object and the associated class arises.     

On the Classification of <Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>-Points Concentrating Solutions for Mean Field Equations and the Symmetry Properties of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>-Vortex Singular Hamiltonian on the Unit Disk

Motivated by the analysis of the multiple bubbling phenomenon (Bartolucci et al. in Commun. Partial Differ. Equ. 29(7–8):1241–1265, 2004) for a singular mean field equation on the unit disk (Bartolucci and Montefusco in Nonlinearity 19:611–631, 2006), for any N≥3 we characterize a subset of the 2π/N-symmetric part of the critical set of the N-vortex singular Hamiltonian. In particular we prove that this critical subset is of saddle type. As a consequence of our result, and motivated by a recently posed open problem (Bartolucci et al. in Commun. Partial Differ. Equ. 29(7–8):1241–1265, 2004), we can prove the existence of a multiple bubbling sequence of solutions for the singular mean field equation.     

Lattice-ordered Abelian groups and Schauder bases of unimodular fans

Baker-Beynon duality theory yields a concrete representation of any finitely generated projective Abelian lattice-ordered group in terms of piecewise linear homogeneous functions with integer coefficients, defined over the support of a fan . A unimodular fan over determines a Schauder basis of : its elements are the minimal positive free generators of the pointwise ordered group of -linear support functions. Conversely, a Schauder basis of determines a unimodular fan over : its maximal cones are the domains of linearity of the elements of . The main purpose of this paper is to give various representation-free characterisations of Schauder bases. The latter, jointly with the De Concini-Procesi starring technique, will be used to give novel characterisations of finitely generated projective Abelian lattice ordered groups. For instance, is finitely generated projective iff it can be presented by a purely lattice-theoretical word.

     

General infinite dimensional duality and applications to evolutionary network equilibrium problems

In this paper the authors present an infinite dimensional duality theory for optimization problems and evolutionary variational inequalities where the constraint sets are given by inequalities and equalities. The difficulties arising from the structure of the constraint set are overcome by means of generalized constraint qualification assumptions based on the concept of quasi relative interior of a convex set. An application to a general evolutionary network model, which includes as special cases traffic, spatial price and financial equilibrium problems, concludes the paper.