Rheological properties of paraffin suspensions of surface-modified alumina powder for low-pressure injection moulding

Due to the hygroscopic nature of fine alumina powders, the presence of water may have a detrimental effect on the rheological properties of a suspension in melted paraffin for low-pressure injection moulding (LPIM). For this reason, a modification of the powder surface from hydrophilic to hydrophobic is essential for the production of high-quality moulded ceramics. In our paper, the efficiency of the application and the chemisorption of protective monomolecular layers of a long-chain carboxylic acid or its salts will be presented. The effect of the powder treatment on the shear viscosity and the viscoelastic properties of the suspensions for LPIM as well as on their stability in terms of the detrimental effect of water will be discussed.This paper was presented at the first Annual European Rheology Conference (AERC) held in Guimarães, Portugal, September 11-13, 2003.     

Development of a synthetic route towards N4,N9-disubstituted 4,9-diaminoacridines: On the way to multi-stage antimalarials

A multi-step synthetic route towards N⁴,N⁹-disubstituted 4,9-diaminoacridines that, to the best of our knowledge, has no precedence in the literature, has been developed. The target structures are likely to reveal interesting biological activities in the near future, not only due to their mepacrine-like core, but also because they embed simultaneously the pharmacophores of chloroquine and primaquine, antimalarial drugs that act at different stages of malaria infection.     

Neutral pion production in subthreshold heavy ion collision with16O (38 MeV/u) and20Ne (200 MeV/u) beams

Inclusive production of neutral pions has been studied in¹⁶O +²⁷Al,¹⁹⁷Au reactions at 38 MeV/u and²⁰Ne +²⁷Al reaction at 200 MeV/u. A setup of 10 Pb glass Cherenkov detector telescopes was used to detect the twoγ rays from theπ ⁰ decay.     

Determination of 4-demethoxy-3'-deamino-3'-aziridinyl-4'-methylsulphonyldaunorubicin+ ++ and its 13-hydroxy metabolite by direct injection of human plasma into a column-switching liquid chromatography system with mass spectrometric detection.

A selective, sensitive and fully automated column-switching LC system using direct injection of human plasma followed by mass spectrometry (MS) detection was developed and validated to determine the concentrations of 4-demethoxy-3'-deamino-3'-aziridinyl-4'-methylsulphonyldaunorubicin++ + (PNU-159548) and its 13-hydroxy metabolite (PNU-169884). A 50-microl human plasma sample was directly introduced into a C4-alkyl-diol silica clean-up column separating analytes from proteins and polar endogenous compounds using water and methanol as the mobile phase. The fraction containing PNU-159548 and its metabolite was back-flushed and transferred to the analytical column. The compounds were separated using a Zorbax SB C8 column (150x4.6 mm, 5 microm) under gradient conditions with the mobile phase containing acetonitrile and 2 mM ammonium formate, pH 3.5. MS detection was by atmospheric pressure ionisation with multiple reaction monitoring in positive ion mode. Linearity was demonstrated over the calibration range of 0.051-10.291 ng/ml for PNU-159548 and 0.104-10.434 ng/ml for PNU-169884. The assay was validated with respect to accuracy, precision and analyte stability. On the basis of the validation data, the developed analytical method was found to be suitable for use in Phase I clinical studies.     

Quantum Lyapunov Exponents

We show that it is possible to associate univocally with each given solution of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation a particular phase flow (quantum flow) of a non-autonomous dynamical system. This fact allows us to introduce a definition of chaos in quantum dynamics (quantum chaos), which is based on the classical theory of chaos in dynamical systems. In such a way we can introduce quantities which may be appelled quantum Lyapunov exponents. Our approach applies to a non-relativistic quantum-mechanical system of n charged particles; in the present work numerical calculations are performed only for the hydrogen atom. In the computation of the trajectories we first neglect the spin contribution to chaos, then we consider the spin effects in quantum chaos. We show how the quantum Lyapunov exponents can be evaluated and give several numerical results which describe some properties found in the present approach. Although the system is very simple and the classical counterpart is regular, the most non-stationary solutions of the corresponding Schrödinger equation are chaotic according to our definition.     

Solution of the Hartree-Fock equations

We suggest to use the Newton iteration method for constructing a (locally unique) solution of the atomic and nuclear Hartree-Fock equations for an arbitrary number of particles. Our proposal is based on a theorem by Kantorovi and rests on the following points: 1) the two-body potential must satisfy a boundedness condition; 2) the zero-order approximation, used to start the iteration sequence, must satisfy certain conditions, to be proved numerically. Condition 1) holds, for instance, for all local potentials, defined by a bounded function and for a class of nonlocal potentials; it does not hold for local potentials, behaving as 1/r near the origin.This work has been supported in part by Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Sezione di Catania) and by Centro Siciliano di Fisica Nucleare e di Struttura della Materia (Catania).     

Inclusive (p, π0) reactions atE lab=200 MeV

Zeitschrift für Physik A Hadrons and nuclei - The inclusive production of neutral pions has been studied with a proton beam atE lab =200 MeV. The twoγ rays from theπ 0 decay were...     

Convergence of the Rayleigh—Ritz method in self-consistent-field and multiconfiguration self-consistent-field calculations

We investigate the analytical convergence of SCF and MCSCF calculations, when the dimension of the subspaces to which the orbitals are restricted tends to infinity. We show that the completeness only inL ²(R ³;C ²) of the orbital bases does not ensure the convergence of the Ritz-energy, neither in SCF nor in MCSCF calculations, but that this convergence — as well as the convergence of the Ritz-orbitals in SCF calculations — is on the contrary guaranteed if the orbital bases are complete in the Sobolev spaceW ^1,2(R ³;C ²). Some consequences on the choice of the orbital exponents of Slater and Gauss functions are also discussed.     

Hartree-Fock theory with constrained deformation

We study the variational Hartree-Fock problem with constrained deformation. If the deformation is defined by prescribed expectation values of the conventional multipole moments, we show that a necessary condition for the problem to have physically meaningful solutions is that the multipole operators are negligible outside the nucleus, so that they must be state dependent. In this way, a further non-linearity is introduced into the problem. An alternative formulation is to impose a given shape to the nuclear surface by means of two inequality constraints.