Chapter 15 DEA/AR analysis of the 1988–1989 performance of the Nanjing textiles corporation

This article employs new data envelopment analysis/assurance region (DEA/AR) methods to evaluate the efficiency of the 35 textile factories of the Nanjing Textiles Corporation (NTC), Nanjing, China. The returns to scale (RTS) of these factories were studied without assuming that the optimal DEA solutions were unique. All DMUs are identified with pointsE (Extreme Efficient),E (Efficient but not an extreme point) andF (Frontier but not efficient). We then further identify the nonfrontier DMUs with pointsNE, NE andNF according to whether they are projected onto a point inE, E, orF en route to evaluating their performances. All of the inefficient factories were in classNF and had unique optimal primal-dual solution pairs. Consequently, the solution pairs satisfy the strong complementary slackness condition (SCSC). Application of cone-ratio (CR) ARs reduced significantly the number of factories in classE, and showed that some AR-efficient factories were more flexible in adopting the mixture of central planning and market economies that China currently is trying to use. Also, linked-cone (LC) ARs were applied to measure maximum and minimum profit ratios. The SCSC multiplier space approach was utilized to analyze the sensitivity of the efficiency results to potential errors in the data with and without ARs. The results in this article suggest that collective units had a better performance than state-owned units in the two consecutive years analyzed.This paper was written while the author was at the School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, Nanjing 210018, P.R. China.     

Sol-gel derived carbon ceramic electrode containing methylene blue-intercalated α-zirconium phosphate micro particles

Methylene blue-intercalated alpha-zirconium phosphate (MBZrP) micro particles in deionized water were deposited onto the surface of graphite powder to prepare graphite powder-supported MBZrP, which was subsequently dispersed into methyltrimethoxysilane-derived gels to yield a conductive composite. The composite was used as electrode material to fabricate a surface-renewable, rigid, leak-free carbon ceramic composite electrode, bulk-modified with methylene blue (MB). In the configuration, alpha-zirconium phosphate was employed as a solid host for MB, which acted as a catalyst. Graphite powder ensured conductivity by percolation, the silicate provided a rigid porous backbone and the methyl groups endowed hydrophobicity and thus limited the wetting section of the modified electrode. Peak currents of the MBZrP-modified electrode were surface-confined at low scan rates but diffusion-controlled at high scan rates. Square-wave voltammetric study revealed that MBZrP immobilized in carbon ceramic matrix presented a two-electron, three-proton redox process in acidic aqueous solution with pH ranged from 0.44 to 2.94. In addition, the chemically modified electrode showed an electrocatalytic activity toward nitrite reduction at +0.15 V ( vs. Ag/AgCl) in acidic aqueous solution (pH=0.44). The linear range and detection limit are 1x10(-6)-4x10(-3) mol x L(-1) and 1.5x10(-7) mol x L(-1), respectively.     

Influence of the water molecule on cation-pi interaction: ab initio second order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) calculations

The influence of introducing water molecules into a cation-pi complex on the interaction between the cation and the pi system was investigated using the MP2/6-311++G method to explore how a cation-pi complex changes in terms of both its geometry and its binding strength during the hydration. The calculation on the methylammonium-benzene complex showed that the cation-pi interaction is weakened by introducing H(2)O molecules into the system. For example, the optimized interaction distance between the cation and the benzene becomes longer and longer, the transferred charge between them becomes less and less, and the cation-pi binding strength becomes weaker and weaker as the water molecule is introduced one by one. Furthermore, the introduction of the third water molecule leads to a dramatic change in both the complex geometry and the binding energy, resulting in the destruction of the cation-pi interaction. The decomposition on the binding energy shows that the influence is mostly brought out through the electrostatic and induction interactions. This study also demonstrated that the basis set superposition error, thermal energy, and zero-point vibrational energy are significant and needed to be corrected for accurately predicting the binding strength in a hydrated cation-pi complex at the MP2/6-311++G level. Therefore, the results are helpful to better understand the role of water molecules in some biological processes involving cation-pi interactions.