Study on differential algebraic method for electron optical properties of wide electron beams in immersion electrostatic-magnetic lenses

Differential algebraic method for calculation of electron optical properties is extended to wide electron beams in combined immersion electrostatic-magnetic lenses, based on Taylor series expansion of the differential algebraic data structure of wide electron beam focusing systems. Higher order aberrations referred to off-axis central trajectories are calculated and this makes the evaluation of wide electron beam focusing properties much simplified with high-enough precision. A program was written, and a specific combined immersion electrostatic-magnetic lens is calculated as an example. Computed results show that the second aperture aberrations referred to off-axis central trajectories of the system of the primary one, whereas the third- and over third-order ones only play a secondary role.     

XPS study on surface modification of NiTi alloy by acidic solution immersion and subsequent heating in air

Changes in the surface chemical state of a nearly equiatomic nickel–titanium (NiTi) alloy caused by immersion in aqueous solutions of HNO₃ and H₂SO₄ as well as subsequent heating in air at 723 K were analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). An XPS analysis using angle-resolved technique and a mathematical deconvolution technique revealed that a passive layer formed in an ambient atmosphere contained TiO₂ as a major state and Ni(OH)₂ and NiO as minor states. The Ni(OH)₂ on the alloy remained in the region even when heated in air at 723 K. Therefore, the resulting layer became a Ti-oxide layer with Ni segregated region at the surface, which was NiO formed via dehydration of Ni(OH)₂. However, immersion in an aqueous solution of HNO₃ or H₂SO₄ enables Ni(OH)₂ state to dissolve in the passive layer of a NiTi alloy; thereby, the Ni segregated region rarely appeared in the oxide layer by heating. The Ni segregated region at the surface becomes an obstacle for the inward diffusion of oxygen; thus, the annihilation of such a segregated region results in an increase in the thickness of the oxide layer.     

Simultaneous determination of trace level riot control agents in environmental water by solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography coupled with a flame ionization detector

In this paper, a direct immersion solid-phase microextraction procedure for the simultaneous analyses of four primary riot control agents: 2-chloroacetophenone, o-chlorobenzylidene malonitrile, dibenz(b,f)-1,4-oxazepine, and oleoresin capsicum at μg/L concentration from environmental water was developed. Several parameters that influence the extraction effectiveness were investigated, including fiber type, extraction temperature, extraction time, starring rate, and salinity. Under the recommended conditions, the optimized method had reasonable linearity and accuracy. The average recovery of this method ranged from 84 to 108.1%. The limit of detection for all the analytes ranged from 0.2 to 3 μg/L and the limit of quantification ranged from 1 to 10 μg/L, respectively. A relative standard deviation from 3.0 to 4.3% can be achieved depending on the compounds. The procedure was applied to analyze all the four riot control agents simultaneously in several environmental samples.     

The push-out space of immersed spheres

Let f: M ^m → ? ^m+1 be an immersion of an orientable m-dimensional connected smooth manifold M without boundary and assume that ξ is a unit normal field for f. For a real number t the map f _tξ: M ^m → ? ^m+1 is defined as f _tξ(p) = f(p) + tξ(p). It is known that if f _tξ is an immersion, then for each p ∈ M the number of the focal points on the line segment joining f(p) to f _tξ(p) is a constant integer. This constant integer is called the index of the parallel immersion f _tξ and clearly the index lies between 0 and m. In case f: $\mathbb{S}^m \to \mathbb{R}^{m + 1} $ is an immersion, we study the presence of a component of index μ in the push-out space Ω(f). If there exists a component with index μ = m in Ω(f) then f is known to be a strictly convex embedding of $\mathbb{S}^m $ . We reveal the structure of Ω(f) when $f(\mathbb{S}^m )$ is convex and nonconvex. We also show that the presence of a component of index μ in Ω(f) enables us to construct a continuous field of tangent planes of dimension μ on $\mathbb{S}^m $ and so we see that for certain values of μ there does not exist a component of index μ in Ω(f).     

An extremal class of conformally flat submanifolds in Euclidean spaces

Summary Let <InlineEquation ID=IE"4"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"5"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"6"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"7"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"8"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"9"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"10"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"11"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"12"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"13"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"14"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"15"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"16"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"17"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"18"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"19"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"20"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"21"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[$]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>M^n$ be a Riemannian $n$-manifold with $n\ge 4$. Consider the Riemannian invariant $\sigma(2)$ defined by <InlineEquation ID=IE"1"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"2"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[<InlineEquation ID=IE"3"><EquationSource Format="TEX"><![CDATA[$$]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation>]]></EquationSource></InlineEquation> \sigma(2)=\tau-\frac{(n-1)\min \Ric}{n^2-3n+4}, $$ where $\tau$ is the scalar curvature of $M^n$ and $(\min \Ric)(p)$ is the minimum of the Ricci curvature of $M^n$ at $p$. In an earlier article, B. Y. Chen established the following sharp general inequality: $$ \sigma(2)\le \frac{n^2{(n-2)}^2}{2(n^2-3n+4)}H^2 $$ for arbitrary $n$-dimensional conformally flat submanifolds in a Euclidean space, where $H^2$ denotes the squared mean curvature. The main purpose of this paper is to completely classify the extremal class of conformally flat submanifolds which satisfy the equality case of the above inequality. Our main result states that except open portions of totally geodesic $n$-planes, open portions of spherical hypercylinders and open portion of round hypercones, conformally flat submanifolds satifying the equality case of the inequality are obtained from some loci of $(n-2)$-spheres around some special coordinate-minimal surfaces.     

Determination of parathion in biological fluids by means of direct solid-phase microextraction

A new and simple procedure for the determination of parathion in human whole blood and urine using direct immersion (DI) solid-phase microextraction (SPME) and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is presented. This technique was developed using only 100 μL of sample, and ethion was used as internal standard (IS). A 65-μm Carbowax/divinylbenzene (CW/DVB) SPME fibre was selected for sampling, and the main parameters affecting the SPME process such as extraction temperature, adsorption and desorption time, salt addition, agitation and pH effect were optimized to enhance the sensitivity of the method. This optimization was also performed to allow the qualitative determination of parathion’s main metabolite, paraoxon, in blood. The limits of detection and quantitation for parathion were 3 and 10 ng/mL for urine and 25 and 50 ng/mL for blood, respectively. For paraoxon, the limit of detection was 50 ng/mL in blood. The method showed linearity between the LOQ and 50 μg/mL for both matrices, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.9954 to 0.9999. Precision and accuracy were in conformity with the criteria normally accepted in bioanalytical method validation. The mean absolute recoveries were 35.1% for urine and 6.7% for blood. Other parameters such as dilution of sample and stability were also validated. Its simplicity and the fact that only 100 μL of sample is required to accomplish the analysis make this method useful in forensic toxicology laboratories to determine this compound in intoxications, and it can be considered an alternative to other methods normally used for the determination of this compound in biological media.     

Pesticides in water and the performance of the liquid-phase microextraction based techniques. A review

The control of pesticides in surface, drinking and groundwater is nowadays a real necessity. In the European Community, their concentration must comply with the established parametric and environmental quality standards (EQSs). Regarding the new legislation, this article updates the information concerning the monitoring of pesticides and the technical specifications for their measurement in water samples where ultra-sensitive analytical methods are required. For some compounds, like pesticides, there is still a need to improve the performance of the existing methods. High sensitive techniques like gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) and liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC–MS) have been developed. However, for most of the substances present at trace and ultra-trace levels the extraction and preconcentration steps are so far essential for their detection. Advances at a micro scale have been made and different types of microextractions are being developed. Liquid-phase microextraction (LPME) is an example. The study of this technique has increased in the last years and some innovations have been recently reported for pesticides water analysis. This article reviews the new developed LPME-based techniques and compares its performance with the analytical specifications established for pesticides water monitoring. The results show that LPME-based techniques can be a promising tool to improve the nowadays performance of methods used in pesticides water control.     

Complete graph immersions and minimum degree

An immersion of a graph H in another graph G is a one‐to‐one mapping and a collection of edge‐disjoint paths in G, one for each edge of H, such that the path corresponding to the edge has endpoints and . The immersion is strong if the paths are internally disjoint from . We prove that every simple graph of minimum degree at least contains a strong immersion of the complete graph . This improves on previously known bound of minimum degree at least 200t obtained by DeVos et al. Our result supports a conjecture of Lescure and Meyniel (also independently proposed by Abu‐Khzam and Langston), which is the analogue of famous Hadwiger’s conjecture for immersions and says that every graph without a ‐immersion is ‐colorable.     

Notes on pedal and contrapedal curves of fronts in the Euclidean plane

A pedal curve (a contrapedal curve) of a regular plane curve is the locus of the feet of the perpendiculars from a point to the tangents (normals) to the curve. These curves can be parametrized by using the Frenet frame of the curve. Yet provided that the curve has some singular points, the Frenet frame at these singular points is not well‐defined. Thus, we cannot use the Frenet frame to examine pedal or contrapedal curves. In this paper, pedal and contrapedal curves of plane curves, which have singular points, are investigated. By using the Legendrian Frenet frame along a front, the pedal and contrapedal curves of a front are introduced and properties of these curves are given. Then, the condition for a pedal (and a contrapedal) curve of a front to be a frontal is obtained. Furthermore, by considering the definitions of the evolute, the involute, and the offset of a front, some relationships are given. Finally, some illustrated examples are presented.     

Thermal Methods in the Synthesis of New Ordered Mesoporous Adsorbents

The synthesis of new ordered mesoporous adsorbents, specifically of the MCM-41 type, involves a step of thermal elimination of the template (a surfactant) where CRTA is shown to provide a 'soft chemistry' route. Once the mesoporous (i.e. 2 to 50 nm pore width) material is obtained, the pore size is determined by thermoporometry, a convenient application for low temperature DSC. Finally, the hydrophobic - hydrophilic properties of the pore walls are explored by immersion microcalorimetry in water. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.