Pt film electrodes prepared by the Pechini method for electrochemical decolourisation of Reactive Orange 16

Electrochemical decolourisation of Reactive Orange 16 was carried out in an electrochemical flow-cell, using as working electrodes a Pt thin film deposited on a Ti substrate (Pt/Ti) prepared by the Pechini method and a pure platinum (Pt) foil. Using the Pt/Ti electrodes better results for dye decolourisation were obtained under milder conditions than those used for pure Pt. For the Pt electrode, colour removal of 93 % (lambda = 493 nm) was obtained after 60 min, at 2.2 V vs. RHE, using 0.017 mol L(-1) NaCl + 0.5 mol L(-1) H(2)SO(4) solution. For the Pt/Ti electrode there was better colour removal, 98%, than for the Pt electrode. Moreover, we used 0.017 mol L(-1) NaCl solution and the applied potential was 1.8 V. Under this condition after 15 min of electrolysis, more than 80% of colour was removed. The rate reaction constant, assuming a first order reaction, was 0.024 min(-1) and 0.069 min(-1), for Pt and Pt/Ti electrodes, respectively.

Decolourisation of real textile waste using electrochemical techniques: Effect of electrode composition

The present paper presents the study of the decolourisation of real textile effluent by constant current electrolysis in a flow-cell using a DSAO type material. The effect of using different anode materials (Ti/Ru0.3Ti0.7O2; Ti/Ir0.3Ti0.7O2; Ti/RuxSn1-xO2, where X = 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3) on the efficiency of colour removal is discussed. Attempts to perform galvanostatic oxidation (40 and 60 mA cm(-2)) on the as-received effluent demonstrate that colour removal and total organic carbon (TOC) removal are limited. In this case the greatest degree of colour removal is achieved when anode containing 90% SnO2 is used. If the conductivity of the effluent is increased by adding NaCl (0.1 mol L-1) appreciable colour/TOC removal is observed. The efficiencies of colour and TOC removal are discussed in terms of the energy per order (E-EO/kWhm(-3) order(-1)) and energy consumption (E-C/kW h kg(-1) TOC), respectively. Finally, the extent of colour removal is compared to consent levels presented in the literature. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Lost in mistranslation : A case study of Japanese TV-drama fansubs

「Fansubs」というのはファンが翻訳した字幕のことである。
 本稿では日本のテレビドラマの「Fansubs」の特徴を調べる為、3つのテレビドラマの日本 語の台詞と、ファンが作った字幕を比べている。原文のテキストが翻訳と字幕制作でどの ように変わったかを情報の増減や誤訳など9つのカテゴリーに分類し、字幕テキストを 分析した。作成したのがプロの翻訳者ではなく、または非常に短期間で作成されたこの 「Fansubs」は、公式のテレビやDVDの字幕よりも誤訳などのエラーが非常に多いことが分 かった。 

Dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in double-well potentials

We study the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in symmetric double-well potentials following a sudden change of the potential from the Mott-insulator to the superfluid regime. We introduce a continuum approximation that maps that problem onto the wave-packet dynamics of a particle in an anharmonic effective potential. For repulsive two-body interactions the visibility of interference fringes that result from the superposition of the two condensates following a stage of ballistic expansion exhibits a collapse of coherent oscillations onto a background value whose magnitude depends on the amount of squeezing of the initial state. Strong attractive interactions are found to stabilize the relative number dynamics. We visualize the dynamics of the system in phase space using a quasiprobability distribution that allows for an intuitive interpretation of the various types of dynamics.

Part-time employment within the Swedish retail business : – A study of part-time employment from a management perspective

Research question: How has the presence of PT employees affected the role of managers in the Swedish food retail business? Research purpose: The purpose of this paper was to describe the change that accompanies part-time employment from a management perspective, and particularly, describe how the presence of part-time employment has influenced the role of the manager within the Swedish food retail business. Conceptual framework: The main focused in this chapter is directed towards the role of managers. The basis of the conceptual framework consist of the model developed by Mintzberg including the ten managerial roles and Quinn's eight leadership roles and how the presence of PT employments might affect these roles. Methodology: In this paper, the authors adopted a qualitative design and used narrative inquiry as a research strategy in order to gain a deep understanding of the context. Semi- structured interviews have been collected through a self-selection sampling and the total number of participants was ten. Conclusions: Based on the findings of this paper the presence of PT employees have not influenced and changed the role of managers. The changes that have influenced and caused the change of the role of the managers constitutes of the increased workload, the delegations of tasks and responsibilities, changed positions, the change of the organisational structure of the individual store, and the increased workforce.

Reducing The Risk Of Floods In Urban Areas With Combined Inland-River System

With the change of the water environment in accordance with climate change, the loss of lives and properties has increased due to urban flood. Although the importance of urban floods has been highlighted quickly, the construction of advancement technology of an urban drainage system combined with inland-river water and its relevant research has not been emphasized in Korea. In addition, without operation in consideration of combined inland-river water, it is difficult to prevent urban flooding effectively. This study, therefore, develops the uncertainty quantification technology of the risk-based water level and the assessment technology of a flood-risk region through a flooding analysis of the combination of inland-river. The study is also conducted to develop forecast technology of change in the water level of an urban region through the construction of very short-term/short-term flood forecast systems. This study is expected to be able to build an urban flood forecast system which makes it possible to support decision making for systematic disaster prevention which can cope actively with climate change.

A Framework supporting collaboration on the distributed design of integrated systems

The work described in this thesis aims to support the distributed design of integrated systems and considers specifically the need for collaborative interaction among designers. Particular emphasis was given to issues which were only marginally considered in previous approaches, such as the abstraction of the distribution of design automation resources over the network, the possibility of both synchronous and asynchronous interaction among designers and the support for extensible design data models. Such issues demand a rather complex software infrastructure, as possible solutions must encompass a wide range of software modules: from user interfaces to middleware to databases. To build such structure, several engineering techniques were employed and some original solutions were devised. The core of the proposed solution is based in the joint application of two homonymic technologies: CAD Frameworks and object-oriented frameworks. The former concept was coined in the late 80's within the electronic design automation community and comprehends a layered software environment which aims to support CAD tool developers, CAD administrators/integrators and designers. The latter, developed during the last decade by the software engineering community, is a software architecture model to build extensible and reusable object-oriented software subsystems. In this work, we proposed to create an object-oriented framework which includes extensible sets of design data primitives and design tool building blocks. Such object-oriented framework is included within a CAD Framework, where it plays important roles on typical CAD Framework services such as design data representation and management, versioning, user interfaces, design management and tool integration. The implemented CAD Framework - named Cave2 - followed the classical layered architecture presented by Barnes, Harrison, Newton and Spickelmier, but the possibilities granted by the use of the object-oriented framework foundations allowed a series of improvements which were not available in previous approaches: - object-oriented frameworks are extensible by design, thus this should be also true regarding the implemented sets of design data primitives and design tool building blocks. This means that both the design representation model and the software modules dealing with it can be upgraded or adapted to a particular design methodology, and that such extensions and adaptations will still inherit the architectural and functional aspects implemented in the object-oriented framework foundation; - the design semantics and the design visualization are both part of the object-oriented framework, but in clearly separated models. This allows for different visualization strategies for a given design data set, which gives collaborating parties the flexibility to choose individual visualization settings; - the control of the consistency between semantics and visualization - a particularly important issue in a design environment with multiple views of a single design - is also included in the foundations of the object-oriented framework. Such mechanism is generic enough to be also used by further extensions of the design data model, as it is based on the inversion of control between view and semantics. The view receives the user input and propagates such event to the semantic model, which evaluates if a state change is possible. If positive, it triggers the change of state of both semantics and view. Our approach took advantage of such inversion of control and included an layer between semantics and view to take into account the possibility of multi-view consistency; - to optimize the consistency control mechanism between views and semantics, we propose an event-based approach that captures each discrete interaction of a designer with his/her respective design views. The information about each interaction is encapsulated inside an event object, which may be propagated to the design semantics - and thus to other possible views - according to the consistency policy which is being used. Furthermore, the use of event pools allows for a late synchronization between view and semantics in case of unavailability of a network connection between them; - the use of proxy objects raised significantly the abstraction of the integration of design automation resources, as either remote or local tools and services are accessed through method calls in a local object. The connection to remote tools and services using a look-up protocol also abstracted completely the network location of such resources, allowing for resource addition and removal during runtime; - the implemented CAD Framework is completely based on Java technology, so it relies on the Java Virtual Machine as the layer which grants the independence between the CAD Framework and the operating system. All such improvements contributed to a higher abstraction on the distribution of design automation resources and also introduced a new paradigm for the remote interaction between designers. The resulting CAD Framework is able to support fine-grained collaboration based on events, so every single design update performed by a designer can be propagated to the rest of the design team regardless of their location in the distributed environment. This can increase the group awareness and allow a richer transfer of experiences among them, improving significantly the collaboration potential when compared to previously proposed file-based or record-based approaches. Three different case studies were conducted to validate the proposed approach, each one focusing one a subset of the contributions of this thesis. The first one uses the proxy-based resource distribution architecture to implement a prototyping platform using reconfigurable hardware modules. The second one extends the foundations of the implemented object-oriented framework to support interface-based design. Such extensions - design representation primitives and tool blocks - are used to implement a design entry tool named IBlaDe, which allows the collaborative creation of functional and structural models of integrated systems. The third case study regards the possibility of integration of multimedia metadata to the design data model. Such possibility is explored in the frame of an online educational and training platform.

Adaptation of the international investment contract: the hardship clause

Este trabalho acadêmico explora, em linhas gerais, a questão da adaptação do contrato de investimento internacional, e o tema ‘cláusula de hardship’ em específico. Objetiva-se efetuar uma análise detalhada da cláusula de hardship, como meio de adaptação e flexibilização de contratos internacionais de investimento sob a ótica da prática jurídica e mercantil contemporânea. A discussão se centra no contraste entre a possibilidade de adaptação do contrato por circunstâncias imprevisíveis e o imperativo de previsibilidade no investimento. Nesse sentido, o estudo busca oferecer soluções práticas para o dilema existente entre a necessidade de segurança na relação econômica (cumprimento do contato) e a prevenção da possibilidade de ruína financeira para quaisquer das partes no caso de uma mudança brusca no contexto dos negócios. O trabalho está centrado em uma investigação teórica acerca dos temas de readaptação contratual; diferenças entre sistemas jurídicos de estados-nações, e suas consequências no comércio internacional; e a cláusula de hardship em si. Como forma de contribuir para uma compreensão prática na questão da adaptação do contrato de investimento internacional devido a fatores imprevistos, este trabalho analisa casos reais e tendências atuais observadas na arbitragem internacional.

Evolution of the landscape of Madeira Island: long-term vegetation dynamics

The aim of this thesis was to evaluate historical change of the landscape of Madeira Island and to assess spatial and temporal vegetation dynamics. In current research diverse “retrospective techniques”, such as landscape repeat photography, dendrochronology, and research of historical records were used. These, combined with vegetation relevés, aimed to gather information about landscape change, disturbance history, and vegetation successional patterns. It was found that landscape change, throughout 125 years, was higher in the last five decades manly driven by farming abandonment, building growth and exotic vegetation coverage increase. Pristine vegetation was greatly destroyed since early settlement and by the end of the nineteenth century native vegetation was highly devastated due to recurrent antropogenic disturbances. These actions also helped to block plant succession and to modify floristical assemblages, affecting as well as species richness. In places with less hemeroby, although significant growth of vegetation of lower seral stages was detected, the vegetation of most mature stages headed towards unbalance between recovery and loss, being also very vulnerable to exotic species encroachment. Recovery by native vegetation also occurred in areas formerly occupied by exotic plants and agriculture but it was almost negligible. Vegetation recovery followed the successional model currently proposed, attesting the model itself. Yet, succession was slower than espected, due to lack of favourable conditions and to recurrent disturbances. Probable tempus of each seral stage was obtained by growth rates of woody taxa estimated through dendrochronology. The exotic trees which were the dominant trees in the past (Castanea sativa and Pinus pinaster) almost vanished. Eucalyptus globulus, the current main tree of the exotic forest is being replaced by other cover types as Acacia mearnsii. The latter, along with Arundo donax, Cytisus scoparius and Pittosporum undulatum are currently the exotic species with higher invasive behaviour. However, many other exotic species have also proved to be highly pervasive and came together with the ones referred above to prevent native vegetation regeneration, to diminish biological diversity, and to block early successional phases delaying native forest recovery.

Computational analysis and physico-chemical characterization of an inclusion compound between praziquantel and methyl-beta-cyclodextrin for use as an alternative in the treatment of schistosomiasis

Schistosomiasis is still an endemic disease in many regions, with 250 million people infected with Schistosoma and about 500,000 deaths per year. Praziquantel (PZQ) is the drug of choice for schistosomiasis treatment, however it is classified as Class II in the Biopharmaceutics Classification System, as its low solubility hinders its performance in biological systems. The use of cyclodextrins is a useful tool to increase the solubility and bioavailability of drugs. The aim of this work was to prepare an inclusion compound of PZQ and methyl-beta-cyclodextrin (MeCD), perform its physico-chemical characterization, and explore its in vitro cytotoxicity. SEM showed a change of the morphological characteristics of PZQ:MeCD crystals, and IR data supported this finding, with changes after interaction with MeCD including effects on the C-H of the aromatic ring, observed at 758 cm(-1). Differential scanning calorimetry measurements revealed that complexation occurred in a 1:1 molar ratio, as evidenced by the lack of a PZQ transition temperature after inclusion into the MeCD cavity. In solution, the PZQ UV spectrum profile in the presence of MeCD was comparable to the PZQ spectrum in a hydrophobic solvent. Phase solubility diagrams showed that there was a 5.5-fold increase in PZQ solubility, and were indicative of a type A(L) isotherm, that was used to determine an association constant (K(a)) of 140.8 M(-1). No cytotoxicity of the PZQ:MeCD inclusion compound was observed in tests using 3T3 cells. The results suggest that the association of PZQ with MeCD could be a good alternative for the treatment of schistosomiasis.

An Anisotropic Model of Damage and Unilateral Effect for Brittle Materials

This work deals with the initial applications and formulation of an aniscitropic plastic-damage constitutive model proposed for non-linear analysis of reinforced concrete structures submitted to a loading with change of the sign. The original constitutive model is based on the fundamental hypothesis of energy equivalence between real and continuous medium following the concepts of the Continuum Damage Mechanics. The concrete is assumed as an initial elastic isotropic medium presenting anisotropy, permanent strains and bimodularity (distinct elastic responses whether traction or compression stress states prevail) induced by damage evolution. In order to take into account the bimodularity, two damage tensors governing the rigidity in tension or compression regimes are introduced. Then, some conditions are introduced in the original version of the model in order to simulate the damage unilateral effect. The three-dimensional version of the proposed model is analyzed in order to validate its formulation when compared to micromechanical theory. The one-dimensional version of the model is applied in the analyses of a reinforced concrete beam submitted to a loading with change of the sign. Despite the parametric identification problems, the initial applications show the good performance of the model.

Dynamical Elastic Moduli of the Ti-13Nb-13Zr biomaterial alloy by mechanical spectroscopy

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Crossover between macroscopic and mesoscopic regimes of vortex interactions in type-II superconductors

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

The influence of temporal food restriction on the performance of isolated cardiac muscle

In this study we assessed the mechanical function of isolated left ventricular papillary muscles from 60 day-old male Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) subjected to different periods of food restriction (FR). The food-restricted animals (R) were fed 50% of the amount of diet consumed by the ad Libitum-fed rats (C). The cardiac muscles were studied after 30, 60, and 90 days (R-30, R-60 and R-90) of FR. The effect of FR on myocardial collagen concentration was also evaluated. The parameters from the three control groups that were statistically identical were combined and the control pool group (CP) was formed. The left ventricular weight-to-body weight ratio was lower in the R-30 and higher in the R-60 and R-90 in relation to their control groups. Hydroxyproline concentration was higher only in R-90 compared to CP and R-30. Myocardial mechanical function was the same in the C groups. The comparisons between CP and FR groups showed that: the muscles of R-30 presented increased resting tension and maximum rate of tension decline, and decreased velocity of shortening; the muscles of R-60 and R-90 groups showed a prolongation of the time to peak tension (TPT) and the time to peak shortening (TPS); and R-30 had an increased time from peak tension to 50% relaxation (RT1/2). Increases in TPT, TPS, and RT1/2 in groups R-60 and R-90 were significant in relation to R-30. In conclusion, while FR for 30 days produces disparate effects on myocardial performance, FR for 60 and 90 days prolongs the contraction period. The change of relaxation time in R-90 might be related to the increased myocardial collagen content. (C) 2001 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

In vitro assessment of an experimental coat applied over fluoride varnishes

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)