Study of structural and electronic transport properties of Ce-doped LaMnO3

The structural and electronic transport properties of La_1−x Ce _x MnO₃ (x=0.0–1.0) have been studied. All the samples exhibit orthorhombic crystal symmetry and the unit cell volume decreases with Ce doping. They also make a metal-insulator transition (MIT) and transition temperature increases with increase in Ce concentration up to 50% doping. The system La_0.5Ce_0.5MnO₃ also exhibits MIT instead of charge-ordered state as observed in the hole doped systems of the same composition.     

Intermediate energy proton scattering and nuclear transition densities in nickel isotopes

Using the high-resolution spectrometer SPES-I, the angular distribution of 1.047 GeV protons scattered from ⁵⁸Ni, ⁶⁰Ni, ⁶²Ni, ⁶⁴Ni have been measured in the angular range 4–18°, up to 4.8 MeV excitation energy. The data are analyzed within the framework of Glauber multiple scattering theory using a spin-dependent NN scattering amplitude. The parameters of the neutron density distributions have been determined by a χ² analysis of elastic scattering. The inelastic data corresponding to the first 2⁺ and 3⁻ states are analyzed with the collective model and an attempt has been made to extract information about the corresponding neutron transition densities.     

Reliability of measurement results in food microbiology: the contribution of reference laboratories in the European Union and of international/European standardization

The contribution of reference laboratories in the European Union and of European/international standardization to the reliability of food microbiology measurement results is discussed. A set of European Union reference laboratories has been established. Each of them coordinates a network of national reference laboratories which, in turn, coordinate networks of laboratories in charge of official testing and sometimes own checks in each European Union country. Their contribution to the reliability of food microbiology measurement results is illustrated by three food safety cases: Listeria monocytogenes, coagulase positive staphylococci and milk/milk products. The contribution of European/international standardization focuses on two topics: method validation and measurement uncertainty. The standards covering these topics—EN ISO 16140 and ISO/TS 19036—are briefly discussed, and an update given on their ongoing revision.     

Characterization of hexacationic imidazolium ionic liquids as effective and highly stable gas chromatography stationary phases

Polycationic ionic liquids (ILs) are an attractive class of ILs with great potential applicability as gas chromatography stationary phases. A family of hexacationic imidazolium ILs derived from the cycloalkanol family was chemically first prepared in a straightforward manner and then applied for analytical separation purposes. Four tuneable engineering vectors, namely cation ring size structure, anion nature, spatial disposition of cycloalkanol substituents and O‐substitution, were considered as experimental parameters for the design of the desired ionic liquids. A total number of five new phases based on a common benzene core respectively exhibited column efficiencies around to 2500 plates/m, broad operating temperature ranges and also, even more importantly, good thermal stabilities (bleeding temperature between 260 and 365°C), finding variations in the selectivity and analytes elution orders depending on the IL structures. Their solvation characteristics were evaluated using the Abraham solvation parameter model, establishing clear correlations between their cation structure and retention capability with respect to certain analytes. The study of relationships between the ILs structure and solvation parameters gives us an idea of the IL stationary phase to be used for specific separations.     

Stability of a critical nonlinear neutral delay differential equation

This work deals with a scalar nonlinear neutral delay differential equation issued from the study of wave propagation. A critical value of the coefficients is considered, where only few results are known. The difficulty follows from the fact that the spectrum of the linear operator is asymptotically closed to the imaginary axis. An analysis based on the energy method provides new results about the asymptotic stability of constant and periodic solutions. A complete analysis of the stability diagram is given in the linear homogeneous case. Under periodic forcing, existence of periodic solutions is discussed, involving a Diophantine condition on the period of the source.     

A general procedure for the synthesis of isoxazolidin-5-ones

Conjugate addition of N-substituted hydroxylamines to α,β-unsaturated esters followed by cyclisation of the adducts with lithium bis (trimethylsily)amide provides the first general means of synthesising isoxazolidin-5-ones, the N-benzyl derivatives of which may be hydrogenolised to β-aminoacids.     

A semi-empirical correlation energy for nuclei

A semi-empirical interaction is used to calculate higher order corrections to the binding energies of even—even nuclei close to the line of stability. These corrections are taken to come from two phonon configurations and are treated as a perturbation with respect to the BCS nuclear ground state which is obtained from applying the energy density method to finite nuclei. The overall correspondence between theory and experiment for the 60 nuclei calculated between A =52 and A =234 is good, with excellent agreement for the non-deformed nuclei situated within the regions A = 72 to 144 and A = 200 to 212. The large correction enegies (several MeV per nucleus on the average) indicate that these correlations are of importance for explaining nuclear binding energies and that it is necessary to include them within energy functional itself. The fact that these correlations come almost exclusively from nucleons close to the fermi surface is also discussed.     

Corrections to eikonal models for hadron-nucleus scattering at high and intermediate energies

Corrections to eikonal amplitudes for hadron-nucleus scattering are calculated for realistic optical potentials at medium and high energies. The corrections, involving only one-dimensional integrals, are found to provide rapid convergence towards the exact results. In contrast to the lowest-order eikonal approximation, the corrections lead to a sensitivity of the calculated cross section to the sign of the real part of the optical potential.