Radiation processing techniques in remediation of pollutants,and the role of the IAEA in supporting capacity building in developing countries

Radiation treatment, or a combination of radiation with conventional biological–chemical–physical processes, can help in the remediation of contaminated surfaces and in combating industrial chemical effluents and air pollution. The use of ionizing radiation as a powerful tool for inactivation of microbes is a valuable option to address likely threats from biohazard contamination that could be introduced either deliberately or inadvertently into areas where the public are exposed to, as well as for treatment of volatile organic compounds and similar hazardous chemical agents is an emerging development in tackling harmful pollutants. The role of the IAEA has been crucial both in supporting the development of local capabilities as well as in fostering international cooperation due to the multidisciplinary expertise required for achieving sustainable benefits. The IAEA is implementing Coordinated Research Projects, (CRP) thematic topical reviews of issues and challenges involved, and Technical Cooperation (TC) assistance in establishing and maintaining infrastructure in the MS. This paper will give an insight into the above mentioned IAEA activities, with examples of successes achieved through CRPs, as well as challenges on the road for broader dissemination of radiation processing technology for environmental remediation.     

New modifications in 15 UD pelletron at nuclear science centre

The 15 UD pelletron at NSC has been operational and performed well during the last 11 years. There have been major modifications performed for upgradation of pelletron system over this period. Major upgradations which have been implemented are new resistor network system for voltage gradient, doublet to singlet unit conversion for accelerator units, turbopump based gas stripper system etc. In addition accelerator mass spectroscopy program has also been started. A new multi-cathode source, Wien filter etc. have been procured and will be added soon in the system. An overview of the most significant upgradations undertaken and other activities for the system are being reported in the present paper.     

High-resolution characterization of liquid-crystalline [60]fullerenes using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Liquid-crystalline materials containing fullerenes are valuable in the development of supramolecular switches and in solar cell technology. In this study, we characterize the liquid-crystalline and dynamic properties of fullerene-containing thermotropic compounds using solid-state natural abundance (13)C NMR experiments under stationary and magic angle spinning sample conditions. Chemical shifts spectra were measured in isotropic, liquid-crystalline nematic and smectic A and crystalline phases using one-dimensional (13)C experiments, while two-dimensional separated local-field experiments were used to measure the (1)H- (13)C dipolar couplings in mesophases. Chemical shift and dipolar coupling parameters were used to characterize the structure and dynamics of the liquid-crystalline dyads. NMR data of fullerene-containing thermotropic liquid crystals are compared to that of basic mesogenic unit and mesomorphic promoter compounds. Our NMR results suggest that the fullerene-ferrocene dyads form highly dynamic liquid-crystalline phases in which molecules rotate fast around the symmetry axis on the characteristic NMR time scale of approximately 10 (-4) s.     

Provably secure dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic maps

With the aim of guaranteeing secure communication through public networks, three-factor password authentication (TF-PWA) scheme plays a key role in many internet applications. Since in TF-PWA scheme, the communicating entities can mutually authenticate each other and generate a shared session key, which will be used for secure exchange of messages in succeeding communication among them. As a result, the TF-PWA schemes gain enormous consideration in recent years. More recently, due to light-weight features of the extended chaotic map, it is also extensively applied in designing of public key encryption, key agreement, image encryption, S-box, hash function, digital signature, password authentication, etc. The aim of this paper was to design a dynamic identity-based three-factor password authentication scheme using extended chaotic map (ECM-TF-PWA) in the random oracle model. The proposed scheme is provably secure based on the intractability assumption of chaotic map-based Diffie–Hellman problem. The informal security analysis gives the evidence that our scheme protects all attacks and provides functionality attributes that are needed in a three-factor authentication system. Besides, the performance discussion shows that our scheme performs better than others in respect of computation and communication cost.     

Digital speckle interferometry for assessment of surface roughness

In this work, the principle of interferometry is used to assess the surface roughness of the machined surfaces. Interferometry produces an interference fringe pattern when two or more light waves interact with each other. It is one of the important tool for precision optical metrology and testing. Well-known advantages of the phase shifting interferometry include high measurement accuracy, rapid measurement, good result even with low contrast fringes and that the polarity of the wave front can be determined. In fringe projection techniques, a known optical fringe pattern is projected onto the surface of interest. The fringe pattern on the surface is perturbed in accordance with the profile of the test surface, thereby enabling direct derivation of surface profile.In this work, an attempt has been made to assess the surface roughness using a speckle fringe analysis method of five frame phase shift algorithm for machined surface (ground surface). As these fringes are too noisy, advanced filtering technique has been used so as to reduce noise and to get improved wrapped phase map from the phase shifted fringes. A phase unwrapping software has been developed using discrete cosine transform (DCT) to generate the three-dimensional (3-D) profiles. Finally, it is compared with R_a values measured using a mechanical stylus instrument, showing good agreement.     

Dielectric relaxation phenomena of rigid polar liquid molecules under giga hertz electric field

The dielectric relaxation phenomena of rigid polar liquid molecules chloral and ethyltrichloroacetate (j) in benzene, n-hexane and n-heptane (i) under 4.2, 9.8 and 24.6 GHz electric fields at 30°C are studied to show the possible existence of double relaxation times τ ₂ and τ ₁ for rotations of the whole and the flexible parts of molecules. The probability of showing double relaxation is more in aliphatic solvents indicating their nonrigidity. The symmetric and asymmetric distribution parameters γ and δ are obtained from X _ij ^′ /X _0ij and X _ij ^″ /X _0ij and w _j →0 where X _ij ^′ and X _ij ^″ are real and imaginary parts of the complex orientational susceptibility X _i ^* and X _0ij is the low frequency susceptibility which is real. X _ij ’s are involved with the measured dielectric relative permittivities ε _ij ^′ , ε _in ^″ , ε _0ij and ε _∞ij of solutions. The theoretical weighted contributions c ₁ and c ₂ towards dielectric dispersions by Fröhlich’s method are compared with the experimental ones obtained from the graphical variation of X _ij ^′ /X _0ij and X _ij ^″ /X _0ij with weight fractions w _j ’s at w _j → 0. The measured dipole moments μ ₂ and μ ₁ of the whole and the flexible part of a polar molecule in terms of the linear coefficients β’s of X _ij ^′ ’s with w _j ’s and the estimated τ ₂ and τ ₁ reveal their associations with aliphatic solvents. The theoretical dipole moments μ _theo’s from the available bond angles and bond moments of the substituent polar groups of the molecules with the estimated μ’s suggest the mesomeric, inductive and electromeric effects in them under GHz electric field.