Current air quality analytics and monitoring: A review

This review summarizes the different tools and concepts that are commonly applied in air quality monitoring. The monitoring of atmosphere is extremely important as the air quality is an important problem for large communities. Main requirements for analytical devices used for monitoring include a long period of autonomic operation and portability. These instruments, however, are often characterized by poor analytical performance. Monitoring networks are the most common tools used for monitoring, so large-scale monitoring programmes are summarized here. Biomonitoring, as a cheap and convenient alternative to traditional sample collection, is becoming more and more popular, although its main drawback is the lack of standard procedures. Telemonitoring is another approach to air monitoring, which offers some interesting opportunities, such as ease of coverage of large or remote areas, constituting a complementary approach to traditional strategies; however, it requires huge costs.     

On the application of slip boundary condition on curved boundaries

Hydrodynamic simulations of sloshing phenomena often involve the application of slip boundary condition at the wetted surfaces. If these surfaces are curved, the ambiguous nature of the normal vector in the discretized problem can interfere with the application of such a boundary condition. Even the use of consistent normal vectors, preferred from the point of view of conservation, does not assure good approximation of the continuum slip condition in the discrete problem, and non‐physical recirculating flow fields may be observed. As a remedy, we consider the Navier slip condition, and more successfully, the so‐called BC‐free boundary condition. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Combined intra-intermolecular criss-cross cycloaddition of a new fluorinated unsymmetrical allenylazine with alkynes

The reaction of a new fluorinated unsymmetrical allenylazine with dimethyl acetylenedicarboxylate and phenylacetylene affords the combined intra-intermolecular criss-cross cycloaddition products, 2,3-disubstituted-1,10-diazatricyclo[5.2.1.0^4,10]deca-2,6-diene derivatives. The products contain three fused five-membered rings with two nitrogen atoms within an unsaturated heterocyclic system. The structures were assigned using 2D NMR correlations and in the case of the phenylacetylene adduct by X-ray structure analysis.     

Dynamical dark energy models – dynamical system approach

We study the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with dynamical dark energy modelled in terms of the equation of state p _X = w _X (a(z)) ρ _X in which the coefficient w _X is parameterized by the scale factor a or redshift z. We use methods of qualitative analysis of differential equations to investigate the space of all admissible solutions for all initial conditions on the two-dimensional phase plane. We show advantages of representing this dynamics as a motion of a particle in the one-dimensional potential V(a). One of the features of this reduction is the possibility of investigating how typical big rip singularities are in the future evolution of the model. The properties of potential function V can serve as a tool for qualitative classification of all evolution paths. Some important features like resolution of the acceleration problem can be simply visualized as domains on the phase plane. Then one is able to see how large is the class of solutions (labelled by the inset of the initial conditions) leading to the desired property.     

Effect of Ga doping on magneto-transport properties in colossal magnetoresistive La0.7Ca0.3Mn1−xGaxO3 (0<x<0.1)

Samples of La_0.7Ca_0.3Mn_1−xGa_xO₃ with x=0, 0.025, 0.05 and 0.10 were prepared by standard solid-state reaction. They were first characterized chemically, including the microstructure. The magnetic properties and various transport properties, i.e. the electrical resistivity, magnetoresistivity (for a field below 8 T), thermoelectric power and thermal conductivity measured each time on the same sample, are reported. The markedly different behaviour of the x=0.1 sample from those with a smaller Ga content, is discussed. The dilution of the Mn³⁺/Mn⁴⁺ interactions with Ga doping considerably reduces the ferromagnetic double exchange interaction within the manganese lattice leading to a decrease of the Curie temperature. The polaron binding energy varies from 224 to 243 meV with increased Ga doping.     

On two mean value properties and functional equations associated with them

Summary Motivated by different mean value properties, the functional equationsf(x) – f(y)/x–y=[(x, y)], (i)xf(y) – yf(x)/x–y=[(x, y)] (ii) (x y) are completely solved when, are arithmetic, geometric or harmonic means andx, y elements of proper real intervals. In view of a duality between (i) and (ii), three of the results are consequences of other three.The equation (ii) is also solved when is a (strictly monotonic) quasiarithmetic mean while the real interval contains 0 and when is the arithmetic mean while the domain is a field of characteristic different from 2 and 3. (A result similar to the latter has been proved previously for (i).)     

The dynamics of multidimensional cosmological models in the presence of quantum effects. I. The case FRW ×T D at high temperatures

The dynamical system approach is applied to the study of dynamics of multidimensional cosmological models with topology FRW ×T ^D (D-dimensional torus) in the presence of high-temperature quantum effects. The stability methods developed in the paper of Szydowski (Gen. Rel. Grav.,20, 221, 1988) are used in the analysis of typical states of the metric in the neighborhood of singularities and for large time values. The problems of dynamical dimensional reduction, structure of singularities, isotropization, etc., are discussed in this context.     

Nuclear Techniques in the Elucidation of Chemical Structure

The paper offers three applications of nuclear methods in the research of chemical structure. First, progress in positron annihilation spectroscopy is illustrated by a positron beamline study, which obtained results that are not available through conventional experiments. The positron beam was used for the study of Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films containing 4-58 layers of arachidic acid and its salts. These measurements have shown that this emerging technique is capable of characterizing even such elusive systems. Second, the potential of Mössbauer spectroscopy to answer current challenges of solid state chemistry are shown in a study on perovskites of recent interest. ¹⁵¹Eu Mössbauer spectroscopy was used to study the effect of Pr substitution in EuBa₂Cu₃O_7-. It was shown that the introduction of Pr into the rare earth site as well as into the Ba site results in the appearance of extra electrons both in the copper oxide planes and at the 4f shell of Eu cations. The observed effects were explained by the hole filling effect of Pr. Finally, a survey is presented on the recently developed techniques for nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation, an exciting and very rapidly developing extension to conventional Mössbauer spectroscopy. An interesting new result is that nuclear inelastic scattering experiments performed on solutions of ⁵⁷Fe complexes show contribution from vibrations rather than from diffusion to the inelastic spectra.