The determination of uranium in biological materials by neutron activation analysis using the fission product134I

A method for the determination of uranium based on²³⁵U thermal neutron fission, has been developed and employed on samples of ashed fish tissue and seaweed. The method involves a post-irradiation ion exchange separation of iodine isotopes. The 884 keV photopeak of¹³⁴I is used for measurement. Uranium detection limits in the samples concerned have been estimated to be 1·10⁻⁸g in terms of natural uranium. The precision achieved in analysing several series of 3–5 samples was 4–10 per cent. The accuracy of the method was tested by employing an independent neutron activation procedure based on²³⁹U measurement. The accuracy of both methods was checked by analysing NBS SRM 1571 ‘Orchard Leaves’.     

On travelling-wave solutions to systems of conservation laws with singular viscosity

Abstract. The method of vanishing artificial viscosity is used to obtain smooth, largedata travelling-wave solutions to a class of conservation laws with semidefinite viscosity. The one-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations serve as an illustrating example.     

The Littlewood-Gowers problem

The paper has two main parts. To begin with, suppose that G is a compact abelian group. Chang’s Theorem can be viewed as a structural refinement of Bessel’s inequality for functions ƒ ∈ L ²(G). We prove an analogous result for functions ƒ ∈ A(G), where A(G) is the space endowed with the norm , and generalize this to the approximate Fourier transform on Bohr sets. As an application of the first part of the paper, we improve a recent result of Green and Konyagin. Suppose that p is a prime number and A ⊂ ℤ/pℤ has density bounded away from 0 and 1 by an absolute constant. Green and Konyagin have shown that ‖χ _A ‖ _A(ℤ/pℤ) ≫ ɛ (log p)^1/3−ɛ; we improve this to ‖χ _A ‖ _A(ℤ/pℤ) ≫ ɛ (log p)^1/2−ɛ. To put this in context, it is easy to see that if A is an arithmetic progression, then ‖χ _A ‖ _A(ℤ/pℤ) ≪ log p.     

The Influence of Dung Amendments on Dissolved Organic Matter in Grassland Soil Leachates - Preliminary Results from a Lysimeter Study

Abstract

Understanding the carbon (C) cycle in grassland pasture systems requires more information about the fate of decomposing dung material within the soil. In this soil lysimeter study we successfully applied the natural ¹³C abundance labelling technique to trace dung-C within a temperate grassland soil. Dung was collected from beef steers fed on either maize (a C₄ plant) or perennial ryegrass (a C₃ plant) silages, and applied to a freely draining (C₃) grassland soil. Leachates were collected from soil lysimeters (0–2.5) and (0–10 cm soil depth) to determine the organic carbon and ¹³C content of < 0.7 μm filtered solution. Leachates were taken from (i) control, no dung added, (ii) C₃ dung and (iii) C₄ dung amended soil. Results showed that, (i) the addition of dung resulted in a tenfold increase in C lost from the lysimeters in drainage waters, (ii) up to 50% of the C present in the leachates was ‘native’ soil C and (iii) the application of dung produced a ‘priming’ effect. Further work is required to verify; (i) whether increased leaching of native C following dung application is a ‘true priming’ phenomenon, or merely the result of ‘displacement’ or ‘pool substitution’ of soil C, and (ii) the precise conditions and mechanisms under which organic amendments induce a true ‘priming’ effect in grassland and other agricultural soils.     

Electron-phonon scattering in an asymmetric double barrier resonant tunneling structure

We calculate the electron-phonon scattering rate for an asymmetric double barrier resonant tunneling structure based on dielectric continuum theory, including all phonon modes, and show that interface phonons contribute much more to the scattering rate than do bulk-like LO phonons for incident energies which are approximately within an order of magnitude of the Fermi energy. The maximum scattering rate occurs for incident electron energies near the quantum well resonance. Subband nonparabolicity has a significant influence on electron-phonon scattering in these structures. We show that the relaxation time is comparable to the dwell time of electrons in the quantum well for a typical resonant tunneling structure. Received: 23 December 1997 / Revised: 24 March 1998 / Accepted: 9 March 1998     

Manipulations of listeners' echo perception are reflected in event-related potentials

To gain information from complex auditory scenes, it is necessary to determine which of the many loudness, pitch, and timbre changes originate from a single source. Grouping sound into sources based on spatial information is complicated by reverberant energy bouncing off multiple surfaces and reaching the ears from directions other than the source's location. The ability to localize sounds despite these echoes has been explored with the precedence effect: Identical sounds presented from two locations with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (e.g., 1-5 ms) are perceived as a single source with a location dominated by the lead sound. Importantly, echo thresholds, the shortest onset asynchrony at which a listener reports hearing the lag sound as a separate source about half of the time, can be manipulated by presenting sound pairs in contexts. Event-related brain potentials elicited by physically identical sounds in contexts that resulted in listeners reporting either one or two sources were compared. Sound pairs perceived as two sources elicited a larger anterior negativity 100-250 ms after onset, previously termed the object-related negativity, and a larger posterior positivity 250-500 ms. These results indicate that the models of room acoustics listeners form based on recent experience with the spatiotemporal properties of sound modulate perceptual as well as later higher-level processing.     

Amplification of a cyclic mixed-metalloporphyrin tetramer from a dynamic combinatorial library through orthogonal metal coordination

A cyclic porphyrin tetramer, consisting of two bis-phosphine substituted zinc(II) porphyrin units and two Rh(III)TPP units, is selected and amplified virtually quantitatively from a dynamic combinatorial library using 4,4'-bipy as a scaffold and using orthogonal binding modes.     

Acylhydroperoxide oxidations of the anticancer agent hexamethylmelamine

The clinically effective anticancer agent hexamethylmelamine undergoes an unusual acylhydroperoxide oxidative transformation to give the novel product 2,4-bis(dimethylamino)-6-[(dimethylamino)oxy]-1,3,5-triazine.