On the concentration and determination of plutonium in natural waters by adsorption on MnO2 filters

A new method of analysis of the efficiency of four filters of MnO₂ in series which takes into account the reactions induced in plutonium by the sorbent is described. The system of differential equations describing the behaviour of plutonium in water as it passes through the filters is solved and the parameters of the filters are determined for a best fitting of the solutions corresponding to the experimental uncertainties. The method is checked by numerical simulation and then applied to water solutions with a known plutonium concentration and to some experimental results given by other authors. In all occassions the results are consistent with the possibility of determining the contents of plutonium in sea and continental waters with uncertainties of the order of 10%.     

Quasi-genericity of bifurcations to high dimensional invariant tori for maps

We consider a family of maps in a Banach spaceE near the situation when the derivative at the fixed point has two pairs of complex eigenvalues lying on the unit circle, the other part of the spectrum being strictly inside the unit disc. We focus our attention on the region of the parameter space where the truncated normal form of the maps shows a bifurcation of a family of invariantT ¹-circles into a family of invariantT ²-tori. We show that this problem needs a 3 dimensional parameter unfolding and that, for the complete maps, bifurcation occurs at points _,, where is the rotation number on the non-normally hyperbolicT ¹-circle, ande ^±2i are the eigenvalues of the constant matrix conjugated to the non-contracting part of the linearization on the normal fiber bundle overT ¹. Making some non-resonance and diophantine assumptions on (, ) leading to a positive measure Cantor set inT ², we show that in paraboloïdal regions of the 3 dim. parameter space we have clean bifurcations as for the truncated normal form. The complement of these regions forms a set of bubbles such as the ones obtained by Chenciner in [Chen] for a codimension 2 problem for maps in ². The main tool here is a generalization for a matrix function onT ¹, close to a constant, of the quasi-conjugacy to a constant, modulo a minimum of additional parameters (moved quasi-conjugacy). For the infinite dimensional case we use aC decoupling result on the angular dependent linear parts into a contraction, still angular dependent, and another part quasi-conjugated to a constant matrix. This type of analysis applies for a wide range of problems, where truncated normal forms of the maps give bifurcations fromT ⁿ toT ⁿ⁺¹ tori, and this needs a (n+1)-dimensional parameter unfolding.We gratefully acknowledge the DRET (contrat 86/1445) who supported one of the authors (J.L.) during this work. This research has been also supported by the E.E.C. contract No. ST 2J-0316-C (EDB) on Mathematical problems in nonlinear Mechanics     

Impedance studies of porous lanthanum-phosphate-bonded nickel electrodes in concentrated sodium hydroxide solution

The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) was investigated on a lanthanum-phosphate-bonded nickel (LPBN) powder electrode in 30 wt.% NaOH at 70°C using ac impedance and steady-state polarization techniques. Circuits containing one or two constant-phase elements (CPEs) in parallel with a resistance and corresponding to fractal and porous electrode models were tested in order to interpret the ac impedance data. The experimental impedance spectra were well described by the porous electrode model and the circuit containing two CPEs. The results obtained from the ac impedance and steady-state measurements allowed the mechanism and kinetics of the HER to be evaluated. Comparison of these parameters with those obtained on the polycrystalline nickel electrode in 1 M alkaline solution at 25°C indicates that an increase in activity is principally due to an increase in the real surface area.     

Immobilizing a Fluorescent Dye Offers Potential to Investigate the Glass/Resin Interface

Silane coupling agents are commonly applied to glass fibers to promote fiber/resin adhesion and enhance durability in composite parts. In this study, a coupling agent multilayer on glass was doped with trace levels of the dimethylaminonitrostilbene (DMANS) fluorophore. The fluorophore was immobilized on the glass surface by tethering the molecule to a triethoxy silane coupling agent, creating the DMANS/silane coupling agent molecule (DMSCA). DMSCA was then diluted with commonly used coupling agents and grafted to a glass microscope coverslip to create a model composite interface. A 53-nm blue shift in fluorescence from the immobilized DMSCA can be followed during cure of an epoxy resin overlayer, giving this technique potential to monitor the properties of the fiber/resin interface during composite processing. Contact angle measurements on these coupling agent layers were similar in the presence or absence of the DMSCA molecule, suggesting that trace levels of the fluorescent probe did not affect the structure of the layer. The immobilized DMSCA molecule behaved similarly to the DMANS precursor in solution. Both showed longer wavelength fluorescence in more polar environments. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.