Chloride distribution coefficient on strongly basic anion-exchange resin: Dependence on co-ion in alkali fluoride solutions

Summary The dependence of the chloride distribution coefficient on the co-ion of solutions of different alkali fluorides, MF, up to 11M is tested on the strongly basic anion-exchange resin AG1-X10. Under the same experimental conditions the distribution coefficient decreases in the following order for M⁺: Na⁺>K⁺>Rb⁺>Cs⁺. This can be explained by the different co-ion-chloride interactions. The consequence of this interaction for a chromatographic separation of chloride is shown with 5M KF and CsF solutions, used as eluants. Depending on the fluoride concentration, the distribution coefficient passes through a minimum value to increase again at higher electrolyte concentration. The non-exchange electrolyte in the resin phase is responsible for this effect. In addition, the bromide and the iodide distribution coefficients up to 10M KF solutions are determined. One results is that the selectivity coefficient between halide ions increases at higher electrolyte concentrations.     

Thermal and acid labile polyurethanes as a new class of responsive materials in polymeric nanoparticles and nanocapsules

A new class of polyurethanes has been designed, containing tertiary carbamate groups in the main chain of the polymer, which enable the resulting polymer to degrade completely under acid and thermal treatment. The decomposition temperatures of the polymers were determined by measuring the evolution of carbon dioxide and other decomposition products using TGA‐MS. Until decomposition of the polymer, no glass transition was found. The polymers exhibit excellent solubility in common organic solvents like chloroform and tetrahydrofuran, making them to suitable materials for film formation. From the obtained polymers, nanoparticles were synthesized by the solvent evaporation method combined with the miniemulsion technique. The resulting nanoparticles can be used as intelligent fillers in films and sensors, since they degrade at temperatures of above 180 °C, which can be detected by a color change reaction with ninhydrin. Polymeric nanocapsules were prepared by an interfacial polyaddition reaction from 2,4‐toluene diisocyanate and tertiary diols performed at the droplet's interface in inverse (water‐in‐oil) miniemulsions. These nanocapsules with an encapsulated photoacid generator can act as a release system, whereby an acidic release through irradiation with ultraviolet light can be triggered. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2012     

Red Blood Cell Stiffness and Adhesion Are Species-Specific Properties Strongly Affected by Temperature and Medium Changes in Single Cell Force Spectroscopy

Besides human red blood cells (RBC), a standard model used in AFM-single cell force spectroscopy (SCFS), little is known about apparent Young’s modulus (Ea) or adhesion of animal RBCs displaying distinct cellular features. To close this knowledge gap, we probed chicken, horse, camel, and human fetal RBCs and compared data with human adults serving as a repository for future studies. Additionally, we assessed how measurements are affected under physiological conditions (species-specific temperature in autologous plasma vs. 25 °C in aqueous NaCl solution). In all RBC types, Ea decreased with increasing temperature irrespective of the suspension medium. In mammalian RBCs, adhesion increased with elevated temperatures and scaled with reported membrane sialic acid concentrations. In chicken only adhesion decreased with higher temperature, which we attribute to the lower AE-1 concentration allowing more membrane undulations. Ea decreased further in plasma at every test temperature, and adhesion was completely abolished, pointing to functional cell enlargement by adsorption of plasma components. This halo elevated RBC size by several hundreds of nanometers, blunted the thermal input, and will affect the coupling of RBCs with the flowing plasma. The study evidences the presence of a RBC surface layer and discusses the tremendous effects when RBCs are probed at physiological conditions.     

Post‐Metallocenes in the Industrial Production of Polyolefins

Research on “post‐metallocene” polymerization catalysis ranges methodologically from fundamental mechanistic studies of polymerization reactions over catalyst design to material properties of the polyolefins prepared. A common goal of these studies is the creation of practically useful new polyolefin materials or polymerization processes. This Review gives a comprehensive overview of post‐metallocene polymerization catalysts that have been put into practice. The decisive properties for this success of a given catalyst structure are delineated.     

Differences of Convex Compact Sets in the Space of Directed Sets. Part I: The Space of Directed Sets

A normed and partially ordered vector space of so-called directed sets is constructed, in which the convex cone of all nonempty convex compact sets in R ⁿ is embedded by a positively linear, order preserving and isometric embedding (with respect to a new metric stronger than the Hausdorff metric and equivalent to the Demyanov one). This space is a Banach and a Riesz space for all dimensions and a Banach lattice for n=1. The directed sets in R ⁿ are parametrized by normal directions and defined recursively with respect to the dimension n by the help of a support function and directed supporting faces of lower dimension prescribing the boundary. The operations (addition, subtraction, scalar multiplication) are defined by acting separately on the support function and recursively on the directed supporting faces. Generalized intervals introduced by Kaucher form the basis of this recursive approach. Visualizations of directed sets will be presented in the second part of the paper.     

Performance Evaluation of a Multicell Topology Implemented With Single-Phase Nonregenerative Cells Under Unbalanced Supply Voltages

The analysis of a multicell topology that is implemented with single-phase nonregenerative cells under an unbalanced ac mains is presented. The study shows that the topology naturally compensates most of the voltage unbalance; for instance, for a 100% voltage unbalance in the ac mains, just 32% reaches the load. For critical applications, a feedforward control technique is proposed in order to compensate the remaining unbalance at the load side. The resulting topology, in combination with the proposed strategy, reduces near to zero the load fundamental voltage unbalance, while the input current unbalance and distortion are also improved. A theoretical analysis that is based on symmetrical components and the experimental results confirm the theoretical considerations.     

A57Fe Mössbauer study of the high pressure hydride phases of Fe and Co

Hydrides of iron and cobalt prepared at pressures between 4.0 and 9.5 GPa were studied by⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer spectroscopy at 4.2 K. Iron hydride was found to be nearly stoichiometric FeH. The two iron sites in its dhep lattice have hyperfine fields of 33.8 and 28.8 T. Practically the same results were found for the deuteride. In hep ε-CoH_x, the hyperfine fields decrease with hydrogen content by about 6% betweenx=0 andx=0.5. In all studied hydrides the electron densities at the⁵⁷Fe nuclei are smaller than in the pure metals.     

On the low-lying zeros of Hasse-Weil L-functions for elliptic curves

In this paper, we obtain an unconditional density theorem concerning the low-lying zeros of Hasse-Weil L-functions for a family of elliptic curves. From this together with the Riemann hypothesis for these L-functions, we infer the majorant of 27/14 (which is strictly less than 2) for the average rank of the elliptic curves in the family under consideration. This upper bound for the average rank enables us to deduce that, under the same assumption, a positive proportion of elliptic curves have algebraic ranks equaling their analytic ranks and finite Tate-Shafarevich group. Statements of this flavor were known previously [M.P. Young, Low-lying zeros of families of elliptic curves, J. Amer. Math. Soc. 19 (1) (2005) 205-250] under the additional assumptions of GRH for Dirichlet L-functions and symmetric square L-functions which are removed in the present paper.