Evolution of yttrium trifluoroacetate during thermal decomposition

A detailed analysis of the thermal decomposition of yttrium trifluoroacetate under different atmospheres is presented. Thermogravimetry, differential thermal analysis, and evolved gas analysis have been used for this in situ analysis. Solid residues at different stages have been characterized by means of X-ray diffraction, elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. The first decomposition stage (310 °C) is exothermic and involves the complete removal of carbon (organic part) and the formation of yttrium fluoride. This process is characterized by a fast mass loss rate. Afterwards, yttria (Y₂O₃) is formed at 1200 °C through a slow process controlled by the out diffusion of fluorine that involves the formation of yttrium oxyfluoride as an intermediate. The evolution of the mass during the decomposition and the structure of the yttria particles is not affected by the presence of oxygen or water. However, when the oxygen (water) partial pressure is as low as 0.02% (<0.002%), the kinetics and final particle structure are strongly affected.     

Antioxidant Activity of Polyphenols,from Mauritia flexuosa (Aguaje), Based on Controlled Dehydration

Plant polyphenols offer several benefits for the prevention of diverse illnesses. Fruit’s edible and inedible parts (pulp, seeds, peels, stems, flowers) are important sources of polyphenols. Different industrial processes for fruit treatment and commercialization affect the total polyphenol content (TPC), and probably the biological activity. The purpose of the present work was to determine the TPC and antioxidant activity (by DPPH) of polyphenols extracted from the pulp and seeds of Mauritia flexuosa (aguaje), in fresh and dehydrated forms, in order to determine the possible connection with the quantity of polyphenols and their specific antioxidant activity. The highest phenolic content for M. flexuosa seeds in fresh form (non-dehydrated) was 270.75 mg GAE/100 g with a 96-h extraction. With respect to the dehydrated samples, the best yield was quantified in the 96-h dehydrated seed sample. For all pulp and seeds, dehydrated for 24, 48, and 96 h, TPC showed a slightly decreasing pattern. The DPPH results were the highest in the 96-h dehydrated samples and the differences among all dehydrated pulp and seed samples were minimal. More studies testing the presence of other antioxidant components could help in understanding the detailed antioxidant activity, and related more to the specific action, rather than only total polyphenol content.     

Rearrangement inequalities for functionals with monotone integrands

The inequalities of Hardy-Littlewood and Riesz say that certain integrals involving products of two or three functions increase under symmetric decreasing rearrangement. It is known that these inequalities extend to integrands of the form F(u₁,…,u_m) where F is supermodular; in particular, they hold when F has nonnegative mixed second derivatives ∂_i∂_jF for all i≠j. This paper concerns the regularity assumptions on F and the equality cases. It is shown here that extended Hardy-Littlewood and Riesz inequalities are valid for supermodular integrands that are just Borel measurable. Under some nondegeneracy conditions, all equality cases are equivalent to radially decreasing functions under transformations that leave the functionals invariant (i.e., measure-preserving maps for the Hardy-Littlewood inequality, translations for the Riesz inequality). The proofs rely on monotone changes of variables in the spirit of Sklar's theorem.     

Positive Functionals on some Spaces of Fractions

The aim of this work is to study norm preserving extensions of positive functionals on some spaces of fractions. The main result is stated in the case of unitary complex Banach algebras with involution. Moreover, we deal with C*-algebras and the commutative case as well. An application is also given.     

New silica hybrids elaborated by sol-gel process from bifunctional thiadiazole and 1,2,4-triazole precursors

New hybrid materials were synthesized from an inorganic precursor, (tetraethoxysilane: TEOS) and bifunctional organic precursors through the sol-gel process. Indeed, monolithic and transparent hybrid gels were obtained by the reaction of tetraethoxysilicate (TEOS) with 1,2,4-thiadiazole-3,5-diamine (1), 5-amino-1,3,4-thiadiazole-2-thiol (2), and 1H-1,2,4-triazole-3-thiol (3) in ethanol as solvent, using chloric acid (HCl 10^?1M) as catalyst. It is shown that TEOS has been cross-linked with bi-functional heterocyclic compounds: (1), (2) and (3) leading to the formation of transparent and colorous gels. The characterization was realized by infrared, ²⁹Si and ¹³C CP MAS NMR. The xerogels morphology and texture were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Brunauer – Emmet – Teller method (BET). The obtained results show that organic adducts (1), (2) and (3) react with TEOS leading to gels in which Si–N and Si–S bridges were formed. According to N₂-physisorption results, xerogels are mesoporous with specific surface area varied from 105 to 312 m²g^?1 and their isotherms are classified as type IV. The optic and magnetic properties of hybrids were studied respectively by UV-Vis spectroscopy and RPE. This study showed that all materials are paramagnetic semiconductors.     

Electromechanical properties of single domain PZN–12%PT measured by three different methods

In this paper, we compare the electromechanical properties of tetragonal single domain PZN–12%PT single crystals obtained by different methods: resonance–antiresonance method, Brillouin scattering, and resonant ultrasound spectroscopy. The agreement between the different measurements is found satisfactory for many elastic constants within experimental uncertainties. Differences are notable for the elastic constants associated to the propagation of shear waves (c₆₆^E and c₄₄^E). This can be accounted for by imperfections of the sample in acoustic spectroscopy and specific difficulties of shear resonators used for the resonance method. Strong discrepancies are noted for the hardened elastic constant c₃₃^D associated to longitudinal waves propagating along the polarization direction; we suggest this can arise from a frequency dependence of the dielectric constant.     

Quantumness Measures for a System of Two Qubits Interacting with a Field in the Presence of the Time-Dependent Interaction and Kerr Medium

In this work, we introduce the standard Tavis-Cummings model to describe two-qubit system interacting with a single-mode field associated to power-law (PL) potentials. We explore the effect of the time-dependent interaction and the Kerr-like medium. We solve the Schrödinger equation to obtain the density operator that allows us to investigate the dynamical behaviour of some quantumness measures, such as von Neumann entropy, negativity and Mandel’s parameter. We provide how these entanglement measures depend on the system parameters, which paves the way towards better control of entanglement generation in two-qubit systems. We find that the enhancement and preservation of the atoms-field entanglement and atom-atom entanglement can be achieved by a proper choice of the initial parameters of the field in the absence and presence of the time-dependent interaction and Kerr medium. We examine the photons distribution of the field and determine the situations for which the field exhibits super-poissonian, poissonian or sub-poissonian distribution.     

Cation order-disorder in Pb(B,B)O3-related relaxors: The random-layer model investigated by Monte Carlo simulation

The charge-balanced random-layer model for ordered lead-based perovskites was investigated by using the standard Metropolis Monte Carlo method on a rigid lattice with simple ionic model. Our results show that in the structure formula Pb[B′]_1/2[B″]_1/2O₃, where all B″-sites are occupied by B^V cations, chemical order of B^II and B^V cations does exist in B′-sites and the ordered structure has an hexagonal symmetry. An order-disorder transition as a function of temperature is evidenced by an abrupt variation of both the heat capacity and a long-range order parameter. Finally, the evolution of the short-range order parameter versus temperature shows that a local order remains in B′-sites contrary to the charge-balanced random-layer model that suggests that B′-sites are randomly occupied. This local order could be helpful to clarify some experimental results.     

Conformal metrics with prescribed Q-curvature on S n

In this paper we prescribe a fourth order conformal invariant on the standard n-sphere, with n????5, and study the related fourth order elliptic equation. We prove new existence results based on a new type of Euler?CHopf type formula. Our argument gives an upper bound on the Morse index of the obtained solution. We also give a lower bound on the number of conformal metrics having the same Q-curvature.