Detection of irradiated foods by luminescence of contaminating minerals—effect of mineral composition on luminescence intensity

Laboratory irradiated rock and mineral samples were studied for their luminescence properties. The effect of alteration of feldspars on luminescence intensity was determined by the autoradiographic method for porphyritic granodiorite planar rock samples and with the TL reader for crushed minerals. Feldspars and quartz exhibited more intensive luminescence than mafic minerals, and luminescence of fresh K feldspar was the most intense. Potassium concentration did not have any effect on luminescence intensity for K feldspars but the intensity was highly dependent on the alteration degree of the mineral. Decrease in luminescence was found without a change in the element composition of the mineral and alteration was due to sericitization of K feldspar.     

Microwave-accelerated methodology for the direct reductive amination of aldehydes

[chemical reaction: see text]. An improved procedure for the direct reductive amination of aldehydes was developed which uses dibutyltin dichloride as catalyst in the presence of phenylsilane as reductant. Rapid reaction is promoted by the use of microwave conditions with anilines, secondary and primary amines being suitable reactants.     

Thermo-Reversible Cellulose Micro Phase-Separation in Mixtures of Methyltributylphosphonium Acetate and γ-Valerolactone or DMSO

We have identified cellulose solvents, comprised of binary mixtures of molecular solvents and ionic liquids that rapidly dissolve cellulose to high concentration and show upper-critical solution temperature (UCST)-like thermodynamic behaviour - upon cooling and micro phase-separation to roughly spherical microparticle particle-gel mixtures. This is a result of an entropy-dominant process, controllable by changing temperature, with an overall exothermic regeneration step. However, the initial dissolution of cellulose in this system, from the majority cellulose I allomorph upon increasing temperature, is also exothermic. The mixtures essentially act as ‘thermo-switchable’ gels. Upon initial dissolution and cooling, micro-scaled spherical particles are formed, the formation onset and size of which are dependent on the presence of traces of water. Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) and ¹³C cross-polarisation magic-angle spinning (CP-MAS) NMR spectroscopy have identified that the cellulose micro phase-separates with no remaining cellulose I allomorph and eventually forms a proportion of the cellulose II allomorph after water washing and drying. The rheological properties of these solutions demonstrate the possibility of a new type of cellulose processing, whereby morphology can be influenced by changing temperature.     

Eigenvalues of Schrödinger operators and Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps

Eigenvalues and eigenspaces of selfadjoint Schrödinger operators on are expressed in terms of Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps corresponding to Schrödinger operators on the upper and lower half space. (© 2013 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

An Open Problem: Accumulation of Nonreal Eigenvalues of Indefinite Sturm–Liouville Operators

In this note we conjecture that the eigenvalues of singular indefinite Sturm–Liouville operators accumulate to the real axis whenever the eigenvalues of the corresponding definite Sturm–Liouville operator accumulate to the bottom of the essential spectrum from below.     

Resuspension of radionuclides into the atmosphere due to forest fires

Two major wild fire episodes occurred in north-western Russia in April/May and August 2008. The burning biomass and heating of the surface soil released several hazardous components into the atmosphere. During the spring smoke episode the ¹³⁷Cs activity concentration in the air in southern Finland increased by a factor of 10 compared to values just before the episode. Simultaneously there was an increase of a same order of magnitude in the concentrations of PM₁₀, trace metals (e.g. lead), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (e.g. benzo[a]pyrene) and potassium. The ²¹⁰Po/²¹⁰Pb activity ratio increased from the usual 3–5% to even as high as 35% because Po is more volatile than Pb. The summer episode was less severe but still the mercury concentration in the air increased by a factor of two while ¹³⁷Cs activity concentration rose by a factor of eight. From the radiological point of view the exposure to the increased radionuclide concentration was insignificant compared to health hazards due to the increased concentration of aerosol particles and their chemical components.     

The Effect of Void Structure on the Permeability of Fibrous Networks

A Kozeny–Carman-based model of permeability for fibrous networks is proposed: the original model is extended by incorporating information about the local structure of the void space. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how in practice this added structural information can be retrieved from a three-dimensional digital image of a fibrous material. The proposed model is then validated for both foam- and water-deposited laboratory sheets of bleached kraft pulp (Scots pine) and chemi-thermo-mechanical pulp (CTMP, Norway spruce). The validation is carried out by comparing the model predictions against computationally determined permeability values. The related fluid-flow simulations are executed using the lattice-Boltzmann method together with high-resolution X-ray microtomography images. For both pulp materials, the sample sets had nearly equal porosities, but deviated substantially in their permeabilities. The proposed model was shown to improve prediction of permeability for the fibrous materials considered: the deviation between the predicted and computationally determined values was no more than 8%.     

Target training with soft computing tools

The personal capabilities and intentions of employees indicate their performance within their organization. It is important for the organization to capture this kind of tacit knowledge since the workforce are the true experts in perceiving the organization's current reality and evaluating which assets require development – including themselves as knowledge assets. The collective inner voice of the workforce helps the organization's management to steer the company and its assets in a sustainable direction.This article presents how the collective inner voice of the workforce can be captured and how it can be used for the benefit of the organization and its employees. The objective is to support individuals’ personal aspirations, as well as to save the money, time and resources that an organization spends on personnel training.The focus of this article is on demonstrating a possible soft-computing method used for competency simulation. The process starts with a linguistic self-evaluation conducted by employees, where individuals’ own perception of current and target competence levels is captured. The self-evaluation is conducted with the help of fuzzy logic. Clusters are formed from the result dataset using an unsupervised neural network clustering method: self-organizing maps. A demonstrator tool is then used to perform a “what-if” type of analysis/simulation on the clusters in the results. With the demonstrator tool, employees can roughly test the impact of alternative training scenarios for themselves. For individuals this may open up new directions for self-development, and for organizations this may allow the efficient use of training resources. We tested the approach with a dataset from a real human resource development project among nuclear power plant operators.The case study reveals the potential of soft-computing based collective competency simulation as one part of personnel development projects in the future. Yet the techniques and the demonstrator tool used in this experiment are far from being products that employees could easily use as part of their training project. Possible benefits of the proposed approach are demonstrated in this article.     

Scattering matrices and Weyl functions

For a scattering system {A, A₀} consisting of self-adjoint extensionsA and A₀ of a symmetric operator A with finite deficiency indices,the scattering matrix {S()} and a spectral shift function arecalculated in terms of the Weyl function associated with a boundarytriplet for A*, and a simple proof of the Krein–Birmanformula is given. The results are applied to singular Sturm–Liouvilleoperators with scalar and matrix potentials, to Dirac operatorsand to Schrödinger operators with point interactions.     

Characterization of Submillimeter Wave Absorbers from 200–600 GHz

This paper presents measurements of both specular and non-specular scattering from several submillimeter wave absorber materials designed for antenna testing and from low-cost carpet materials. The frequency range is 200–600 GHz in specular scattering, and 300–400 GHz in non-specular scattering measurements. The constructed bistatic test bench allows testing of the full continuous angular range of 0°–90°. The measurement results show large differences in performance of different materials. It is shown that reflectivities below –50 dB over limited angular ranges are possible with a correct alignment of the material. Also, low-cost carpet materials have lower than –15 dB reflectivities in most angles, and may be useful in non-critical parts of the antenna test range. The results can be used to optimise the absorber placement inside an antenna range, concerning both best performance and lowest cost.