Mechanistic implications of plastic degradation

Plastics have become an indispensable ingredient of human life. Their enormous use is a matter of great environmental and economic concern, which has motivated the researchers and the technologists to induce different degrees of degradations in the plastic. These degradations can be induced in a better way if their mechanistic implications are properly understood. A better understanding of the mechanism for these degradations is also advocated in order to facilitate the proper use of the alternative waste disposal strategies. In view of the facts concerning the plastic degradation, in this review article, we have discussed various types of polymeric degradations along with their mechanisms, which include photo-oxidative degradation, thermal degradation, ozone-induced degradation, mechanochemical degradation, catalytic degradation and biodegradation. This article also discusses the different methods used to study these degradations and the factors that affect these degradations.     

Ground state energies of doubly even nuclei

Ground state energies of doubly even nuclei which are assumed to be composed of rigid and structureless alpha-particles are calculated. The alpha-particles are assumed to be interacting through a potential composed of a hard core followed by a square well potential in one set of calculations and a Gaussian potential in another set of calculations. Our calculations support the existence of the hard core in the alpha-alpha potential, and suggest the existence of the alphaclustering in doubly even light nuclei.From the graph betweenE ₀/N and we find thatE ₀/N is minimum at =2·57×10³⁷ particles cm^–3. This means that in the surface region an assembly of alpha-particles with = = 2·57×10³⁷ particles cm^–3 is the most stable one.We are greatly indebted to Professors R. Tamagaki, M. Harada and F. Iwamote for making very useful suggestions and for making a few points clear to us. Thanks are also due to Professors P. C. Sood, S. Duttamazumdar and M. K. Pal for many helpful discussinos, and to the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi for giving financial assistance. Thanks are also due to Shri A. N. Phukan for drawing the graphs.     

Quark potentials for mesons in the Klein-Gordon equation

Two relativistic potential models are applied to describe meson spectroscopy in a unified way, encompassing both light and heavy quark systems. A combination of linear and coulomb potentials has been investigated for Klein-Gordon equation using the WKB approximation. A power-like phenomenological potential model has also been studied in the Klein-Gordon framework. Meson masses calculated for both the potentials give a good agreement with the corresponding experimental values.     

A new expression for the Anderson-Grüneisen parameter δ for ionic crystals

The Anderson-Grüneisen parameter δ has been computed theoretically from a general expression developed by Sharma and Tripathi[6]. The δ-γ (Grüneisen parameter) curves have been plotted to find a relation for the best fitted yielding curves by the method of least squares. The relation developed can be put as δ = AγB and it can be inferred that chang's[3] relation is a particular case of this general equation.     

Nonlinear breaking of waves in an electrically conducting and radiating gas

The effects of radiative transfer are treated by the use of a differential approximation which is valid over the entire optical depth range from the transparent limit to the optically thick limit. The singular surface theory is used to determine the modes of wave propagation and to evaluate the behaviour at the wave head. It is shown that there are two modes of wave propagation namely (i) the radiation induced waves which are always damped, and (ii) the modified magnetogasdynamic waves which break at the wave front if the initial discontinuity is sufficiently strong. The effects of thermal radiation, the magnetic field intensity, the finite electrical conductivity and the initial wave front curvature on the non-linear breaking of modified magnetogasdynamic waves are discussed.

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Zusammenfassung Der Einfluß der Strahlung wird mit Hilfe von Differential-Näherungen behandelt, die im ganzen Bereich von optischen Tiefen Gültigkeit haben, von der Transparenz bis zur optisch dicken Grenze. Die Theorie singulärer Flächen wird benützt um die Wellenausbreitung und das Verhalten an der Wellenfront zu behandeln. Es wird gezeigt, daß es zwei Formen von Wellenausbreitung gibt, nämlich (i) Wellen erzeugt durch Strahlung, die immer gedämpft sind, und (ii) die modifizierte magnetogasdynamische Welle, die an der Front immer bricht, wenn die ursprüngliche Diskontinuität stark genug ist. Es werden die Einflüsse der Wärmestrahlung, der magnetischen Feldstärke, der endlichen elektrischen Leitfähigkeit und der ursprünglichen Wellenkrümmung auf die nicht-lineare Frontbildung untersucht.

     

Coulometric determination of uranium in perchloric acid medium and its applications

Amorphous samples of a new inorganic ion exchanger, cerium(IV) selenite have been prepared under varying conditions. The material prepared by mixing 0.025M ceric sulfate and 0.025M sodium selenite in the ratio of 11 was studied in detail for its ion-exchange capacity, chemical stability, IR, thermogravimetry and K_d values. Separations of metal ions have been performed on columns of this ion exchanger.     

On an estimator in T3-class of linear estimators in sampling with varying probabilities from a finite population

Summary Horvitz and Thompson [4] introduced three classes of linear estimators for estimation of population characteristics on the basis of a sample drawn with varying probabilities and without replacement. TheirT ₃-class of estimators does not admit a best unbiased estimator. In this paper, the variance and an unbiased estimate of variance for an estimator in T₃-class, which is proved to have several good properties by Godambe [2], [3], are derived for sampling with varying probabilities with or without replacement.     

Effect of orientation and mobility of polymer molecules at surfaces on contact angle and its hysteresis

The contact angle of a water droplet on the surface of a solid polymer or hydrogel (water-swollen three-dimensional network) depends on whether a hydrophilic moiety of the polymer molecule is oriented towards the air interface or towards the bulk of the solid, but not on the hydrophilicity of the molecule. Therefore, the short-range rotational mobility of a polymer molecule has a major influence on the apparent hydrophilicity of a polymer surface as measured by the contact angle of water. By the came principle, the abnormally large hysteresis effect observed in advancing and receding contact angles of water on some polymer surfaces can be attributed to the reorientation of hydrophilic moieties of polymer molecules at the surface. These factors are demonstrated by selected polymer surfaces with different degrees of mobility at the polymer-air interface.     

Plane symmetric space-time of class 1

A necessary and sufficient condition for a plane symmetric space-time admitting a three-parameter group of motion to be of embedding class 1 is obtained in terms of the components of the curvature tensor.