Radioactivity in the Baltic Sea: inventories and temporal trends of <Superscript>137</Superscript>Cs and <Superscript>90</Superscript>Sr in water and sediments

The Baltic Sea is ecologically unique as one of the world’s largest brackish water basins. It was significantly contaminated by radioactivity following the Chernobyl accident in 1986, the major contaminant being long-lived ¹³⁷Cs. Due to the slow exchange of water between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea and the relatively rapid sedimentation rates, radionuclides have prolonged residence times in the Baltic Sea. ¹³⁷Cs levels are consequently still clearly higher than in other water bodies around the world. In addition to the Chernobyl accident, artificial radionuclides in the Baltic Sea originate from the global fallout following nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s, while discharges into the Baltic Sea from nuclear power plants and other facilities are of minor importance. Here, inventories and the temporal evolution of radionuclides both in seawater and sediments of the Baltic Sea are presented and discussed.     

Hyperbolic Harmonic Functions: Weak Approach with Applications in Function Spaces

Harmonic functions with respect to the Poincare metric on the unit ball are called hyperbolic harmonic functions. We establish the weak formulation of hyperbolic harmonic functions and use it in the study of hyperbolic harmonic function spaces. In particular, we give the Carleson measure characterization for the whole spectrum of spaces, whose analytic counterparts include among else Bloch spaces, Bergman-spaces, Besov-spaces, and Q_p-spaces. The second author was supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation.     

Glass-encapsulated light harvesters: more efficient dye-sensitized solar cells by deposition of self-aligned, conformal, and self-limited silica layers

A major loss mechanism in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSCs) is recombination at the TiO(2)/electrolyte interface. Here we report a method to reduce greatly this loss mechanism. We deposit insulating and transparent silica (SiO(2)) onto the open areas of a nanoparticulate TiO(2) surface while avoiding any deposition of SiO(2) over or under the organic dye molecules. The SiO(2) coating covers the highly convoluted surface of the TiO(2) conformally and with a uniform thickness throughout the thousands of layers of nanoparticles. DSCs incorporating these selective and self-aligned SiO(2) layers achieved a 36% increase in relative efficiency versus control uncoated cells.     

How realistically does outdoor UV-B supplementation with lamps reflect ozone depletion: an assessment of enhancement errors

Limitations in the realism of currently available lamps mean that enhancement errors in outdoor experiments simulating UV-B radiation effects of stratospheric ozone depletion can be large. Here, we assess the magnitude of such errors at two Finnish locations, during May and June, under three cloud conditions. First we simulated solar radiation spectra for normal, compared with 10% and 20% ozone depletion, and convoluted the daily integrated solar spectra with eight biological spectral weighting functions (BSWFs) of relevance to effects of UV on plants. We also convoluted a measured spectrum from cellulose-acetate filtered UV-B lamps with the same eight BSWFs. From these intermediate results we calculated the enhancement errors. Differences between locations and months were small, cloudiness had only a minor effect. This assessment was based on the assumption that no extra enhancement compensating for shading of UV radiation by lamp frames is performed. Under this assumption errors between spectra are due to differences in the UV-B effectiveness rather than differences in the UV-A effectiveness. Hence, conclusions about plant growth from past UV-supplementation experiments should be valid. However, interpretation of the response of individual physiological processes is less secure, so results from some field experiments with lamps might need reassessment.     

Assessment of UV Biological Spectral Weighting Functions for Phenolic Metabolites and Growth Responses in Silver Birch Seedlings

In research concerning stratospheric ozone depletion, action spectra are used as biological spectral weighting functions (BSWFs) for describing the effects of UV radiation on plant responses. Our aim was to evaluate the appropriateness of six frequently used BSWFs that differ in effectiveness with increasing wavelength. The evaluation of action spectra was based on calculating the effective UV radiation doses according to 1–2) two formulations of the generalized plant action spectrum, 3) a spectrum for ultraviolet induced erythema in human skin, 4) a spectrum for the accumulation of a flavonol in Mesembryanthemum crystallinum , 5) a spectrum for DNA damage in alfalfa seedlings and 6) the plant growth action spectrum. We monitored effects of UV radiation on the concentration of individual UV absorbing metabolites and chlorophyll concentrations in leaves and growth responses of silver birch ( Betula pendula ) seedlings. Experiments were conducted outdoors using plastic films attenuating different parts of the UV spectrum. Chlorophyll concentrations and growth were not affected by the UV treatments. The response to UV radiation varied between and within groups of phenolics. In general, the observed responses of phenolic groups and individual flavonoids were best predicted by action spectra extending into the UV-A region with moderate effectiveness.     

Dipole moments of some alkyl vinyl and alkyl propenyl ethers

Dipole moments of several alkyl vinyl and alkyl propenyl ethers have been determined by the Halverstadt-Kumler method in benzene solution at 293 K. The μ values depend on the bulkiness of the alkyl group present. In the alkyl vinyl ether series, a part of the varying μ values may be ascribed to changes in molecular geometry with varying bulkiness of the alkyl group. Other factors are clearly involved, since even in the alkyl (Z)-propenyl ether series μ values depend significantly on the alkyl group, although the geometry of the molecules remains essentially constant throughout the series. In the latter series, the total dipole moment is linearly related to the Taft's σ^*-values of the alkyl groups:μ/D=?(1.17±0.15)σ^*+(1.29±0.03). This suggests that the variation of μ with the alkyl radical follows from the changing polar character of the alkyl groups, which leads to changes in the value of the group moment μro.     

Carleson measures and conformal self‐mappings in the real unit ball

Bounded and compact Carleson measures in the unit ball B of R ⁿ , n ≥ 2, are characterized by means of global Dirichlet integrals of the conformal self‐map T_a taking a ∈ B to the origin. The same proof applies in the unit ball of C ⁿ . It is also proved that the powers of the Jacobian of T_a satisfy the weak Harnack inequality and even Harnack's inequality with a constant independent of a. As an application of these results it is shown that the two different definitions for Carleson measures in the existing literature are equivalent for a certain range of parameter values. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)