Comparison of different methods for the detoxification of lignocellulose hydrolyzates of spruce

This study describes different detoxification methods to improve both cell growth and ethanol production by Baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. A dilute-acid hydrolyzate of spruce was used for the all detoxification methods tested. The changes in the concentrations of fermentable sugars and three groups of inhibitory compounds—aliphatic acids, furan derivatives, and phenolic compounds—were determined and the fermentability of the detoxified hydrolyzate was assayed. The applied detoxification methods included: treatment with alkali (sodium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide); treatment with sulfite (0.1% [w/v] or 1% [w/v] at pH 5.5 or 10); evaporation of 10% or 90% of the initial volume; anion exchange (at pH 5.5 or 10); enzymatic detoxification with the phenoloxidase laccase; and detoxification with the filamentous fungus Trichoderma reesei. An ion exchange at pH 5.5 or 10, treatment with laccase, treatment with calcium hydroxide, and treatment with T. reesei were the most efficient detoxification methods. Evaporation of 10% of the initial volume and treatment with 0.1% sulfite were the least efficient detoxification methods. Treatment with laccase was the only detoxification method that specifically removed only one group of the inhibitors, namely phenolic compounds. Anion exchange at pH 10 was the most efficient method for removing all three major groups of inhibitory compounds; however, it also resulted in loss of fermentable sugars.     

Noisy one-dimensional maps near a crisis. I. Weak Gaussian white and colored noise

We study one-dimensional single-humped maps near the boundary crisis at fully developed chaos in the presence of additive weak Gaussian white noise. By means of a new perturbation-like method the quasi-invariant density is calculated from the invariant density at the crisis in the absence of noise. In the precritical regime, where the deterministic map may show periodic windows, a necessary and sufficient condition for the validity of this method is derived. From the quasi-invariant density we determine the escape rate, which has the form of a scaling law and compares excellently with results from numerical simulations. We find that deterministic transient chaos is stabilized by weak noise whenever the maximum of the map is of orderz>1. Finally, we extend our method to more general maps near a boundary crisis and to multiplicative as well as colored weak Gaussian noise. Within this extended class of noises and for single-humped maps with any fixed orderz>0 of the maximum, in the scaling law for the escape rate both the critical exponents and the scaling function are universal.     

Paradoxical Brownian motion in a microfluidic device: Absolute negative mobility

We report on a paradoxical migration mechanism in a microstructured lab-on-a-chip environment. The phenomenon is based on a subtle interplay between Brownian motion (thermal noise), a periodic and symmetric microstructure, and a biased AC electric field. The resulting non-linear dynamics far from thermal equilibrium gives rise to absolute negative mobility, i.e. a migrational transport, which is – both for negative and positive bias – always opposite to the net acting force, in good agreement between experiment and theory.     

Generation of single-cycle THz transients with high electric-field amplitudes

Single-cycle terahertz (THz) transients in the frequency range 0.3-7 THz with electric-field amplitudes of more than 400 kV/cm are generated by four-wave mixing of the fundamental and the second harmonic of 25 fs pulses from a Ti:sapphire amplifier in ionized air. These transients are fully characterized by electro-optic sampling with ZnTe and GaP crystals. One can tune the center frequency of the THz transients by varying the length of the incident pulse. The electric-field amplitude increases linearly with the incident pulse energy.     

Contact and Conformal Maps in

When the action of the conformal group O(1, n+1) on may be characterized in simple differential geometric terms, even locally: a theorem of Liouville states that a C⁴ map between domains and in whose differential is a (variable) multiple of a (variable) isometry at each point of is the restriction to of a transformation x g·x, for some g in O(1,n+1). In this paper, we consider the problem of characterizing the action of a more general semisimple Lie group G on the space G/P, where P is a minimal parabolic subgroup.     

Ein Existenzsatz über maßtreue Abbildungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung