Indigenous Measures of Personality Assessment in Asian Countries: A Review.

This article reviews attempts to develop multidimensional personality measures in Asia and their applications in clinical assessment. Indigenous personality assessment measures in India, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan are examined. These early attempts have not yielded a comprehensive personality measure that integrates a theoretical framework and an empirical program of validation. The Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI) is cited as an example to illustrate the process of developing an indigenous measure that meets the testing standards of established assessment instruments. On the basis of the research findings from the CPAI, the authors discuss the relevance of indigenous measures in clinical assessment in native cultures as well as in informing mainstream personality assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oxidation of steels in liquid lead bismuth: Oxygen control to achieve efficient corrosion protection

Hybrid systems dedicated to waste transmutation are constituted of an accelerator generating a high energy proton flux, a spallation target on which the accelerated proton beam impinges to produce neutrons and a subcritical core. The Pb-Bi eutectic liquid alloy is considered as spallation target material due to its suitable nuclear and physical properties.However, liquid metals can be corrosive towards containment materials (austenitic and Fe9Cr alloys). In the case of liquid lead bismuth alloy, one of the protection means considered against the dissolution of the steels is the in situ protection by the formation of an oxide layer at the steels’ surface.However, in order to ensure the efficient protection of the steels by an oxide layer, the control and the monitoring of the oxygen content in the Pb-Bi alloy is a major issue. The paper recalls, first, the oxygen chemistry in a lead alloy system, in order to propose the oxygen operating window that complies with both the contamination by lead oxide of the coolant and the corrosion control by the promotion of an oxide film on the structure. Results of tests performed in stagnant lead bismuth at high oxygen concentrations are also presented showing the effect of various operating parameters on the oxidation kinetics and on the nature of the oxide layer. An oxidation mechanism and model are also proposed and compared with experimental data.     

α‐cyclodextrin assisted self‐assembly of poly(ethylene glycol)‐block‐poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) in aqueous media

Poly(ethylene glycol)‐block‐poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) (PEG‐b‐PNIPAM) block copolymers were synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization, and the α‐cyclodextrin (α‐CD) induced self‐assembly characteristics of the system were elucidated. Below the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of PNIPAM, CD threaded onto the PEG segments and induced micellization to form rod‐shaped nanostructures comprising of a PEG/α‐CD condensed phase and a PNIPAM shell. Increasing the temperature of system above the LCST caused the PNIPAM segments to collapse, which resulted in the dethreading of the CD. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci., 2013     

Antifreeze glycoprotein agents: structural requirements for activity

Antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGPs) are considered to be the most efficient means to reduce ice damage to cell tissues since they are able to inhibit growth and crystallization of ice. The key element of antifreeze proteins is to act in a non-colligative manner which allows them to function at concentrations 300-500 times lowers than other dissolved solutes. During the past decade, AFGPs have demonstrated tremendous potential for many pharmaceutical and food applications. Presently, the only route to obtain AFGPs involves the time consuming and expensive process of isolation and purification from deep-sea polar fishes. Unfortunately, it is not amenable to mass production and commercial applications. The lack of understanding of the mechanism through which the AFGPs inhibit ice growth has also hampered the realization of industrial and biotechnological applications. Here we report the structural motifs that are essential for antifreeze activity of AFGPs, and propose a unified mechanism based on both recent studies of short alanine peptides and structure activity relationship of synthesized AFGPs.     

Development of a multicriteria tool for optimizing the renovation of buildings

The renovation of a building involves not just the fulfilment of functional requirements, but also considerations such as energy consumption, investment costs, environmental impact and wellbeing. As things stand, new design methods and tools are needed, and the aim of the research presented in this article was to develop a multicriteria tool, MultiOpt, for the optimization of renovation operations, with an emphasis on building envelopes, heating and cooling loads and control strategies. MultiOpt is based on existing assessment software and methods: it uses a genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) coupled to TRNSYS, and economic and environmental databases. This article illustrates its utilization in the renovation of a school in the southern French city of Nice which was representative of France’s building stock. The study started with the monocriterion optimization of energy consumption, cost, thermal comfort, and life-cycle environmental impact. It then moved onto multicriteria optimizations. The monocriterion analyses focussed on the building’s characteristics and performance; the multicriteria analyses were concerned with the interactions between the different objectives, and with identifying their convergences and divergences. The results demonstrated that MultiOpt can be used to compare different combinations of options and constraints, thus constituting a basis for operational decision-making.     

Iron porphyrin-based cathode catalysts for PEM fuel cells: Influence of pyrolysis gas on activity and stability

Fe-based catalysts for the O₂ reduction in acidic medium were prepared by impregnating chloro-iron tetramethoxyphenylporphyrin (Cl-FeTMPP) on a non-microporous carbon black and heat-treating the resulting material at 950 °C either in NH₃ (Mode 1) or in Ar (Mode 2). The most active catalyst using Mode 1 has a Fe bulk content of 0.4 wt% and an activity of 17 mA mg⁻¹ at 0.8 V in fuel cell. This activity is controlled by the microporous surface area of the catalyst. The most active catalysts using Mode 2 has an Fe bulk content of 3.7 wt% and an activity of 1.9 mA mg⁻¹ at 0.8 V in fuel cell. In Mode 2, the nitrogen and/or the iron surface concentrations control the activity. Concerning stability, Mode 1-catalysts are unstable while Mode 2-catalysts show stability for at least 15 h when at least 66 wt% Cl-FeTMPP is impregnated onto N330 and heat-treated at 950 °C in Ar. The catalyst made with 66 wt% Cl-FeTMPP has a bulk Fe content of 5.2 wt% and an activity of 1.3 mA mg⁻¹ at 0.8 V in fuel cell. Thus, in the present study, pyrolysis in NH₃ gives active but unstable catalysts while pyrolysis in argon gives less active but more stable catalysts at high Cl-FeTMPP loading. Graphitization of Cl-FeTMPP during pyrolysis in argon seems to impart stability. Mode 2-catalysts are stable in spite of a high peroxide yield of 26% while Mode 1-catalysts are unstable in spite of a low 5% peroxide yield.     

Scanning electrochemical microscopy investigations of monolayers bound to p-type silicon substrates

p-Si type electrodes modified with different organic monolayers were investigated by reaction with radical anion and cation electrogenerated at a microelectrode operating in the configuration of a scanning electrochemical microscope. The method proves to be a convenient tool for investigating both the quality and the redox properties of the layer as previously demonstrated on metallic electrodes especially when the sample cannot be electrically connected. Approach curves recorded with the different mediators were used to investigate the electron-transfer rates across alkyl monolayers bound to p-type silicon substrates. Preliminary results indicate that the interfacial electron transfer occurs via electron tunneling through the organic layer as generally described for SAMs grafted on gold electrodes.