Synthesis of carbon nanofibers for mediatorless sensitive detection of NADH

Highly sensitive amperometric detection of dihydronicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) by using novel synthesized carbon nanofibers (CNFs) without addition of any mediator has been proposed. The CNFs were prepared by combination of electrospinning technique with thermal treatment method and were applied without any oxidation pretreatment to construct the electrochemical sensor. In amperometric detection of NADH, a linear range up to 11.45 mu M with a low detection limit of 20 nM was obtained with the CNF-modified carbon paste electrode (CNF-CPE).

In situ analysis of electropolymerization of aniline by combined electrochemistry and surface plasmon resonance

The combination of electrochemistry with surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been used to characterize the growth of polyaniline (PAn) on a gold electrode surface during potential cycling. Potential-modulated SPR characteristics of the PAn film were also revealed. The potential switch between the oxidized and reduced states of PAn can lead to a large change of SPR response due to the variation in the imaginary part of the dielectric constant of PAn film resulting from the transition of the film in conductivity. The redox transition of the PAn film during potential cycling is very profitable to the SPR measurements. Two modes of SPR measurement, SPR angular scan (R-theta) and the time evolution of the reflectivity change at a fixed angle (R-t), were displayed to study the growth process of the PAn film. The angle shift of the resonance minimum recorded at each cathodic limit of cyclic potential scanning allows for the unambiguous measurement of the film growth. During cyclic potential scanning, the R-t curve was repeatedly modulated with the direction of the potential ramp as a result of the redox switch of the PAn film, and the amplitude of potential-modulated reflectivity change was well correlated with the cyclic number. The time differential of the R-t curve permits continuous monitoring of the film growth process. These results illustrate that the combined technique is suitable for studying the electropolymerization process of a conducting polymer.

Oriented growth of MCM-22 zeolite films

MCM-22 zeolite films have been grown with layers vertical to the substrate under hydrothermal synthesis conditions, and characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy.

Aspects of Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue. SemDial 2010, 14th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue

The papers collected in this book cover a range of topics in semantics and pragmatics of dialogue. All these papers were presented at SemDial 2010, the 14th Workshop on the Semantics and Pragmatics of Dialogue. This 14th edition in the SemDial series, also known as PozDial, took place in Poznań (Poland) in June 2010, and was organized by the Chair of Logic and Cognitive Science (Institute of Psychology, Adam Mickiewicz University). From over 30 submissions overall, 14 were accepted as full papers for plenary presentation at the workshop, and all are included in this book. In addition, 10 were accepted as posters, and are included here as 2-4 page short papers. Finally, we also include abstracts from our keynote speakers. We hope that the ideas gathered in this book will be a valuable source of up-to-date achievements in the field, and will become a valuable inspiration for new ones. We would like to express our thanks to all those who submitted to and participated in SemDial 2010, especially the invited speakers: Dale Barr (University of Glasgow), Jonathan Ginzburg (King's College London), Jeroen Groenendijk (University of Amsterdam) and Henry Prakken (Utrecht University, The University of Groningen). Last but not least, we would like to thank everybody engaged in the workshop organization -- the chairs, the local organizing committee for their hard work in Poznań, and the programme committee members for their thorough and helpful reviews.

The Arab Spring as a Test of post-Lisbon Capabilities and Strategies of the European Union in North Africa

This study aims to present the conditions related to the European Union’s involvement in the Arab Spring, as well as examine the extent of this capability-based involvement in the first months of 2011 against the background of competence disputes between institutions and inter-governmental contentions. These considerations will be the basis for conclusions on the theoretical and practical viability of the European Union’s action in the region of North Africa, in terms of both interests defined in Brussels and representation of a jointly agreed position and undertaking practical actions in the international arena. These assumptions can facilitate a new perspective for the EU’s strategic approach framework in the region of North Africa.

The Sensor Network Workbench: Towards Functional Specification, Verification and Deployment of Constrained Distributed Systems

As the commoditization of sensing, actuation and communication hardware increases, so does the potential for dynamically tasked sense and respond networked systems (i.e., Sensor Networks or SNs) to replace existing disjoint and inflexible special-purpose deployments (closed-circuit security video, anti-theft sensors, etc.). While various solutions have emerged to many individual SN-centric challenges (e.g., power management, communication protocols, role assignment), perhaps the largest remaining obstacle to widespread SN deployment is that those who wish to deploy, utilize, and maintain a programmable Sensor Network lack the programming and systems expertise to do so. The contributions of this thesis centers on the design, development and deployment of the SN Workbench (snBench). snBench embodies an accessible, modular programming platform coupled with a flexible and extensible run-time system that, together, support the entire life-cycle of distributed sensory services. As it is impossible to find a one-size-fits-all programming interface, this work advocates the use of tiered layers of abstraction that enable a variety of high-level, domain specific languages to be compiled to a common (thin-waist) tasking language; this common tasking language is statically verified and can be subsequently re-translated, if needed, for execution on a wide variety of hardware platforms. snBench provides: (1) a common sensory tasking language (Instruction Set Architecture) powerful enough to express complex SN services, yet simple enough to be executed by highly constrained resources with soft, real-time constraints, (2) a prototype high-level language (and corresponding compiler) to illustrate the utility of the common tasking language and the tiered programming approach in this domain, (3) an execution environment and a run-time support infrastructure that abstract a collection of heterogeneous resources into a single virtual Sensor Network, tasked via this common tasking language, and (4) novel formal methods (i.e., static analysis techniques) that verify safety properties and infer implicit resource constraints to facilitate resource allocation for new services. This thesis presents these components in detail, as well as two specific case-studies: the use of snBench to integrate physical and wireless network security, and the use of snBench as the foundation for semester-long student projects in a graduate-level Software Engineering course.

Exploring the Zionist evolution of Robert Briscoe: History and memory

Robert Briscoe was the Dublin born son of Lithuanian and German-Jewish immigrants. As a young man he joined Sinn Féin and was an important figure in the War of Independence due to a role as one of the IRA’s main gun-procuring agents. He took the anti-Treaty side during an internecine Civil War, mainly due to the influence of Eamon de Valera and retained a filial devotion towards him for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was a founding member of Fianna Fáil, de Valera’s breakaway republican party, which would dominate twentieth-century Irish politics. He was first elected as a Fianna Fáil T.D. (Teachta Dála, Deputy to the Dáil) in 1927, and successfully defended his seat eleven times becoming the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1956, an honour that was repeated in 1961. On this basis alone, it can be argued that Briscoe was a significant presence in an embryonic Irish political culture; however, when his role in the 1930s Jewish immigration endeavor is acknowledged, it is clear that he played a unique part in one of the most contentious political and social discourses of the pre-war years. This was reinforced when Briscoe embraced Zionism in a belated realisation that the survival of his European co-religionists could only be guaranteed if an independent Jewish state existed. This information is to a certain degree public knowledge; however, the full extent of his involvement as an immigration advocate for potential Jewish refugees, and the seniority he achieved in the New Zionist Organisation (Revisionists) has not been fully recognised. This is partly explicable because researchers have based their assessment of Briscoe on an incomplete political archive in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The vast majority of documentation pertaining to his involvement in the immigration endeavor has not been available to scholars and remains the private property of Robert Briscoe’s son, Ben Briscoe. The lack of immigration files in the NLI was reinforced by the fact that information about Briscoe’s Revisionist engagement was donated to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv and can only be accessed physically by visiting Israel. Therefore, even though these twin endeavors have been commented on by a number of academics, their assessments have tended to be based on an incomplete archive, which was supplemented by Briscoe’s autobiographical memoir published in 1958. This study will attempt to fill in the missing gaps in Briscoe’s complex political narrative by incorporating the rarely used private papers of Robert Briscoe, and the difficult to access Briscoe files in Tel Aviv. This undertaking was only possible when Mr.Ben Briscoe graciously granted me full and unrestricted access to his father’s papers, and after a month-long research trip to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. Access to this rarely used documentation facilitated a holistic examination of Briscoe’s complex and multifaceted political reality. It revealed the full extent of Briscoe’s political and social evolution as the Nazi instigated Jewish emigration crisis reached catastrophic proportions. He was by turn Fianna Fáil nationalist, Jewish immigration advocate and senior Revisionist actor on a global stage. The study will examine the contrasting political and social forces that initiated each stage of Briscoe’s Zionist awakening, and in the process will fill a major gap in Irish-Jewish historiography by revealing the full extent of his Revisionist engagement.

Modulation of the infant immune responses by the firts pertussis vaccine administrations

info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The role of technology in the study of semiotic representations in mathematics

En este trabajo resumimos algunas reflexiones sobre el papel que pueden desarrollar la tecnología en el estudio de sistemas semióticos de representación, y que constituyen el núcleo para la comprensión de los procesos de construcción del conocimiento matemático de los estudiantes. La cita corresponde con el resumen de una página publicado.

The role of evacuation modelling in the development of safer air travel

Computer based mathematical models describing the aircraft evacuation process have a vital role to play in the design and development of safer aircraft, in the implementation of safer and more rigorous certification criteria and in post mortuuum accident investigation. As the risk of personal injury and costs involved in performing large-scale evacuation experiments for the next generation 'Ultra High Capacity Aircraft' (UHCA) are expected to be high, the development and use of these evacuation modelling tools may become essential if these aircraft are to prove a viable reality. In this paper the capabilities and limitation of the air-EXODUS evacuation model are described. Its successful application to the prediction of a recent certificaiton trial, prior to the actual trial taking place, is described. Also described is a newly defined parameter known as OPS which can be used as a measure of evacuation trial optimality. Finally, the data requirements of aircraft evacuation models is discussed along with several projects currently underway at the University of Greenwich designed to obtain this data. Included in this discussion is a description of the AASK - Aircraft Accident Statistics and Knowledge - data base which contains detailed information from aircraft accident survivors.

Using mathematical models to predict the development of aircraft cabin fires

Computer based mathematical models describing aircraft fire have a role to play in the design and development of safer aircraft, in the implementation of safer and more rigorous certification criteria and in post mortuum accident investigation. As the cost involved in performing large-scale fire experiments for the next generation 'Ultra High Capacity Aircraft' (UHCA) are expected to be prohibitively high, the development and use of these modelling tools may become essential if these aircraft are to prove a safe and viable reality. By describing the present capabilities and limitations of aircraft fire models, this paper will examine the future development of these models in the areas of large scale applications through parallel computing, combustion modelling and extinguishment modelling.

A vibrational spectroscopic investigation of rhodanine and its derivatives in the solid state

Raman and infrared spectra are reported for rhodanine, 3-aminorhodanine and 3-methylrhodanine in the solid state. Comparisons of the spectra of non-deuterated/deuterated species facilitate discrimination of the bands associated with N-H, NH2, CH2 and CH3 vibrations. DFT calculations of structures and vibrational spectra of isolated gas-phase molecules, at the B3-LYP/cc-pVTZ and B3-PW91/cc-pVTZ level, enable normal coordinate analyses in terms of potential energy distributions for each vibrational normal mode. The cis amide I mode of rhodanine is associated with bands at ~ 1713 and 1779 cm-1, whereas a Raman and IR band at ~ 1457 cm-1 is assigned to the amide II mode. The thioamide II and III modes of rhodanine, 3-aminorhodanine and 3-methylrhodanine are observed at 1176 and 1066/1078; 1158 and 1044; 1107 and 984 cm-1 in the Raman and at 1187 and 1083; 1179 and 1074; 1116 and 983 cm-1 in the IR spectra, respectively.

Challenges to Slovakia and Poland health policy decisions: use of investment treaties to claim compensation for reversal of privatisation/liberalisation policies

Investment treaties, and possibly the EU Treaty itself, are being used by multinational companies Penta and Eureko to try and force the Slovak government to pay compensation for reversing health privatisation and liberalisation policies. Similar action has been used against the Polish government by Eureko to win compensation worth nearly 2 billion Euros and a policy commitment to further privatisation.

The CPR Survey (1948-1997): a gridded database browser of plankton abundance in the North Sea.

The Continuous Plankton Recorder (CPR) survey provides a unique multi- decadal dataset on the abundance of plankton in the North Sea and North Atlantic and is one of only a few monitoring programmes operating at a large spatio- temporal scale. The results of all samples analysed from the survey since 1946 are stored on an Access Database at the Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science (SAHFOS) in Plymouth. The database is large, containing more than two million records (~80 million data points, if zero results are added) for more than 450 taxonomic entities. An open data policy is operated by SAHFOS. However, the data are not on-line and so access by scientists and others wishing to use the results is not interactive. Requests for data are dealt with by the Database Manager. To facilitate access to the data from the North Sea, which is an area of high research interest, a selected set of data for key phytoplankton and zooplankton species has been processed in a form that makes them readily available on CD for research and other applications. A set of MATLAB tools has been developed to provide an interpolated spatio-temporal description of plankton sampled by the CPR in the North Sea, as well as easy and fast access to users in the form of a browser. Using geostatistical techniques, plankton abundance values have been interpolated on a regular grid covering the North Sea. The grid is established on centres of 1 degree longitude x 0.5 degree latitude (~32 x 30 nautical miles). Based on a monthly temporal resolution over a fifty-year period (1948-1997), 600 distribution maps have been produced for 54 zooplankton species, and 480 distribution maps for 57 phytoplankton species over the shorter period 1958-1997. The gridded database has been developed in a user-friendly form and incorporates, as a package on a CD, a set of options for visualisation and interpretation, including the facility to plot maps for selected species by month, year, groups of months or years, long-term means or as time series and contour plots. This study constitutes the first application of an easily accessed and interactive gridded database of plankton abundance in the North Sea. As a further development the MATLAB browser is being converted to a user- friendly Windows-compatible format (WinCPR) for release on CD and via the Web in 2003.