Influence of the sulfonate countercation on the thermal stability of nafion perfluorosulfonate membranes

We report a strong dependence of the thermal stability of Nafion® perfluorosulfonate ionomer on the nature of the counterion associated with the fixed sulfonate site. These results were obtained using thermal gravimetric analysis on a series of alkali metal and alkyl ammonium cation-exchanged Nafion films. We have found that the temperature of decomposition of Nafion is inversely dependent on the size of the exchanged cation; i.e., Nafion films show improved thermal stability as the size of the counter cation decreases. We attribute this inverse relationship of thermal stability with counterion size to an initial decomposition reaction which is strongly influenced by the strength of the sulfonate-coun-terion interaction. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Spatial design matrices and associated quadratic forms: structure and properties

The paper provides significant simplifications and extensions of results obtained by Gorsich, Genton, and Strang (J. Multivariate Anal. 80 (2002) 138) on the structure of spatial design matrices. These are the matrices implicitly defined by quadratic forms that arise naturally in modelling intrinsically stationary and isotropic spatial processes. We give concise structural formulae for these matrices, and simple generating functions for them. The generating functions provide formulae for the cumulants of the quadratic forms of interest when the process is Gaussian, second-order stationary and isotropic. We use these to study the statistical properties of the associated quadratic forms, in particular those of the classical variogram estimator, under several assumptions about the actual variogram.     

Finitely additive integration and local integration with respect to upper integrals

Summary We study the integration theory for general integral metrics when restricted to upper integrals q, finding improvements in the relation between the classes of the q-integrable and the q_l-integrable functions. We give new results and notions which lead to the desirable characterizations of q-integrable functions as q_l-integrable f with q(|f|) < ∞, and of q_l-integrable functions via the integrability of their upper truncations, under natural conditions which are fulfilled in most finitely additive integration theories.     

Sandwich Techniques in flow injection analysis : Part 1. Continuous recalibration techniques for process control

Flow injection methodology based on sample insertion between two different standard solutions used as carrier streams is described. This approach provides a simple system for continuous recalibration in process control; spectrophotometric and ion-selective electrode procedures are outlined.     

151Eu Mössbauer studies on Eu1+x Ba2−x Cu3O7+δ oxide systems

Mössbauer parameters of¹⁵¹Eu in Eu_1+x Ba_2?x Cu₃O_7+δ have been studied as a function of temperature, forx=0.15 andx=0.25. The areas of the absorption spectra for the two samples are almost equal. This could mean that thef-Mössbauer factor for¹⁵¹Eu at the barium sites is much smaller than that for¹⁵¹Eu at the rare earth sites, i.e. we only observe the spectra of the latter sites. According to this, the fits of the spectra with a single quadrupolar pattern and with two quadrupolar patterns have given equivalent χ² values.     

Biomagnetic measurements utilising a superparamagnetic marker: a feasibility study

Summary A preliminary study is here reported on a new potential marker for biomagnetic measurements. The marker consists of superparamagnetic polymer microspheres which were detected in the presence of external steady magnetic fields by means of an r.f.-SQUID magnetometer. The particles were prepared in samples differing in the concentration value and immersed in a homogeneous magnetic field of variable intensity. A simple model was taken into account for the distribution of the microspheres in the samples, so that the theoretical values were compared to the marker field values measured by the biomagnetic sensor. The overall sensitivity of the experimental apparatus and the minimum concentration value of the marker were then estimated.     

Infinitely renormalizable diffeomorphisms of the disk at the boundary of chaos

We show that, among area contracting embeddings of the 2-disk, infinitely renormalizable maps with a bounded geometry either have positive topological entropy or correspond to a cascade of period doubling.

     

Heavy quark correlations ine + e − annihilations

In heavy quark jets the quark mass acts as a regulator of collinear singularities, making the quark momentum an infra-red safe variable in perturbative QCD. This allows a direct comparison of measured heavy hadron momentum spectra with perturbative calculations. We exploit the factorisation of heavy quark fragmentation to derive QCD predictions for momentum correlations between heavy hadrons produced ine ⁺ e ^? annihilations. We study the practical feasibility and model sensitivity of our approach using Monte Carlo simulations. Higher order perturbative corrections and contributions from non-perturbative effects are found to be at the level of 10%.