Thermal properties of pressure sintered alumina–graphene composites

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - The work concerns the alumina–graphene materials sintered by two different pressure methods. The different particle sizes of graphene were used....     

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.     

The plasticity of the Cu(H2O) 6 2+ Jahn-Teller complex affected by lattice strains and cooperative interactions

The EPR spectra evolution of Cs₂Zn_1?x Cu_x(ZrF₆)₂ · 6H₂O (x=0.01, 0.6, 0.8, and 1.0) in the temperature range 4.2–330 K and the x-ray structure analysis of the compound with x=1.0 in the range 150–327 K show that the Jahn-Teller (JT) complex Cu(H₂O)₆ coordination sphere undergoes a plastic deformation. The observed effect is due to the combined influence of small lattice strains existing in the paraphase and a new one appearing as a result of a ferroelastic phase transition and increasing with decreasing temperature below T _c . It is proved that both cooperative interactions between JT complexes and ferroelastic strain stabilize a certain JT configuration. The problem of instability of a JT configuration compressed at T ～ 265 K is discussed.     

On Non-Continuous Dirichlet Processes

We introduce here some Itô calculus for non-continuous Dirichlet processes. Such calculus extends what was known for continuous Dirichlet processes or for semimartingales. In particular we prove that non-continuous Dirichlet processes are stable under C ¹ transformation.     

Model for describing the production of Centauro events and strangelets in heavy-ion collisions

A phenomenological model for describing the production of Centauro events in relativistic heavy-ion collisions is discussed. The model provides quantitative predictions for kinematical variables, for the baryon number, and for the masses of a Centauro fireball and of its decay products. A Centauro fireball decays predominantly into nucleons, strange hyperons, and possibly strangelets. Centauro events in Pb + Pb collisions at the LHC energy are simulated for the CASTOR detector. The signatures of these events are discussed in detail.     

On the existence and the stability of solutions for higher-order semilinear Dirichlet problems

We investigate the existence and stability of solutions for higher-order two-point boundary value problems in case the differential operator is not necessarily positive definite, i.e. with superlinear nonlinearities. We write an abstract realization of the Dirichlet problem and provide abstract existence and stability results which are further applied to concrete problems.     

Influence of organic modifiers on morphology and crystallization of poly(ϵ‐caprolactone)/synthetic clay intercalated nanocomposites

ε‐caprolactone was polymerized in the presence of neat montmorillonite or organomontmorillonites to obtain a variety of poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL)‐based systems loaded with 10 wt % of the silicates. The materials were thoroughly investigated by different X‐ray scattering techniques to determine factors affecting structure of the systems. For one of the nanocomposites it was found that varying the temperature in the range corresponding to crystallization of PCL causes reversible changes in the interlayer distance of the organoclay. Extensive experimental and literature studies on this phenomenon provided clues indicating that this effect might be a result of two‐dimensional ordering of PCL chains inside the galleries of the silicate. Small angle X‐ray scattering and wide angle X‐ray scattering investigation of filaments oriented above melting point of PCL revealed that polymer lamellae were oriented perpendicularly to particles of unmodified silicate, while in PCL/organoclay systems they were found parallel to clay tactoids. Calorimetric and microscopic studies shown that clay particles are effective nucleating agents. In the nanocomposites, PCL crystallized 20‐fold faster than in the neat polymer. The crystallization rate in nanocomposites was also significantly higher than in microcomposite. Further research provided an insight how the presence of the filler affects crystalline fraction and spherulitic structure of the polymer matrix in the investigated systems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 2350–2367, 2007