Analytical Evaluation of a Reduced-Pressure Microwave-Induced Plasma Studied by Optical Emission Spectrometry Method

ABSTRACT

The authors describe a system that utilizes a reduced-pressure (RP) air-cooled microwave-induced plasma (MIP) torch to interface an ultrasonic nebulizer (USN) with an optical emission spectrometer (OES). Argon was investigated as plasma gas. The analytical potential of such techniques was illustrated for the determination of elements. A univariate approach and simplex optimization procedure was used to achieve optimized conditions and derive analytical figures of merit. Analytical performance of the RP-MIP was characterized by determination of the limits of detection (LODs) and precision (RSDs) with the RP-MIP-OES observed at flow rate of 10 µL min^?1 without removal of any matrix. The experimental concentration detection limits for simultaneous determination, calculated as the concentration giving a signal equal to three times the standard deviation of the blank (LOD, 3σ_blank criterion, peak height), were 15, 4.5, 6.2, 2.9, 31, 6.3, 3.1, 13, 5.4, and 33 n g mL^?1 for Ba, Ca, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, Sr, and Zn, respectively. Absolute limits of detection were 167, 50, 68, 32, 350, 69, 34, 143, 59, and 363 pg for Ba, Ca, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, Sr, and Zn, respectively. The method offers relatively good precision (RSD ranged from 7 to 12%) for liquid analysis and microsampling capability. The accuracy of the method was verified by the use of digested certified reference materials (SRM 1648 (Urban Particulate Matter), IAEA 336 (Lichen), SRM 2710 (Montand Soil), INCT-SBF-4 (Soya Bean Flour)) and by aqueous standard calibration technique. The analyte concentrations in reference materials were in satisfactory agreement with the certified values. The method requires small amounts of reagents and reduces contamination and losses. In general, low-pressure argon discharges proved to be superior, in terms of detection limits (DLs), to atmospheric pressure MIPs for the excitation of the analyte atomic or ionic emission.     

Letter: some more aspects of formation and stability of the protonated serine octamer cluster

The formation of protonated serine octamer clusters from homochiral and heterochiral monomer solutions was investigated. The well-established preference for homochiral cluster formation was found to originate from collision-induced dissociation of the less stable ion population B prior to reaching the mass spectrometer's analyzer cell. In addition, collision-induced dissociation experiments were undertaken to investigate the relative stabilities of populations A and B and infrared multi-photon dissociation experiments addressed the relative stabilities of the protonated serine octamer cluster and its metaclusters. Isotopically-labeled serine was used throughout the experiments.     

Geometric rigidity of transcendental meromorphic functions

The classes of dynamically and geometrically tame functions meromorphic outside a small set are introduced. The Julia sets of geometrically tame functions are proven to be either geometrical circle (in ) or to have Hausdorff dimension strictly larger than 1. Vast classes of dynamically and geometrically tame functions are identified. The research of both authors was supported in part by the Polish KBN Grant No 2 PO3A 034 25, the Warsaw University of Technology Grant no 504G 11200043000 and by the NSF/PAN grant INT-0306004. The research of the second author was supported in part by the NSF Grant DMS 0400481.     

Rigid, perdeuterated lanthanoid cryptates: extraordinarily bright near-IR luminophores

Near-IR emissive lanthanoid cryptates have been developed with the lanthanoids Yb, Nd, Er, and Pr by designing a fully deuterated ligand environment that greatly suppresses multiphonon nonradiative deactivation pathways through avoidance of high-energy oscillators and rigidification of the ligand backbone. Strong luminescence is observed in CD(3)CN for all four lanthanoids. Luminescence lifetimes in CD(3)CN are among the highest values for molecular complexes in solution reported so far (Yb, τ(obs) = 79 μs; Nd, τ(obs) = 3.3 μs). For the ytterbium cryptate, the highest luminescence lifetime can be obtained using CD(3)OD (τ(obs) = 91 μs) and even in nondeuterated CH(3)CN the lifetime is still unusually high (τ(obs) = 53 μs). X-ray crystallography and (1)H NMR analysis of the corresponding nondeuterated lutetium cryptate suggest that the inner coordination sphere in solution is completely saturated by the octadentate cryptand and one chloride counterion. All lanthanoid cryptates remarkably show complete stability during reversed-phase HPLC measurements under strongly acidic conditions.     

A tabu search algorithm for the minmax regret minimum spanning tree problem with interval data

This paper deals with the strongly NP-hard minmax regret version of the minimum spanning tree problem with interval costs. The best known exact algorithms solve the problem in reasonable time for rather small graphs. In this paper an algorithm based on the idea of tabu search is constructed. Some properties of the local minima are shown. Exhaustive computational tests for various classes of graphs are performed. The obtained results suggest that the proposed tabu search algorithm quickly outputs optimal solutions for the smaller instances, previously discussed in the existing literature. Furthermore, some arguments that this algorithm performs well also for larger instances are provided.     

Non-extinction of a Fleming-Viot particle model

We consider a branching particle model in which particles move inside a Euclidean domain according to the following rules. The particles move as independent Brownian motions until one of them hits the boundary. This particle is killed but another randomly chosen particle branches into two particles, to keep the population size constant. We prove that the particle population does not approach the boundary simultaneously in a finite time in some Lipschitz domains. This is used to prove a limit theorem for the empirical distribution of the particle family.     

Microextraction techniques in the analysis of food flavor compounds: A review

Food flavor compounds due to the complexity of food as a matrix, and usually their very low concentrations in a product, as well as their low odor thresholds, create a challenge in their extraction, separation and quantitation. Food flavor volatiles represent compounds of different polarity, volatility and chemical character, which determine method of extraction for their isolation from food. Microextraction techniques, mainly SPME and SBSE have been used for food flavor compounds analysis for two decades. Microextraction methods other than SPME and SBSE are seldom used despite their analytical potential. The review discusses the nature of food flavor compounds, and different approaches to food flavor analysis. It summarizes the use of microextraction methods in food flavor compounds analysis based on papers published in the last 5 years, and discusses the potential of microextraction methods in this field.     

Random dynamics of transcendental functions

This work concerns random dynamics of hyperbolic entire and meromorphic functions of finite order whose derivative satisfies some growth condition at ∞. This class contains most of the classical families of transcendental functions and goes much beyond. Based on uniform versions of Nevanlinna’s value distribution theory, we first build a thermodynamical formalism which, in particular, produces unique geometric and fiberwise invariant Gibbs states. Moreover, spectral gap property for the associated transfer operator along with exponential decay of correlations and a central limit theorem are shown. This part relies on our construction of new positive invariant cones that are adapted to the setting of unbounded phase spaces. This setting rules out the use of Hilbert’s metric along with the usual contraction principle. However, these cones allow us to apply a contraction argument stemming from Bowen’s initial approach.