Real-time organic aerosol chemical speciation in the indoor environment using extractive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Understanding the sources and composition of organic aerosol (OA) in indoor environments requires rapid measurements, since many emissions and processes have short timescales. However, real-time molecular-level OA measurements have not been reported indoors. Here, we present quantitative measurements, at a time resolution of five seconds, of molecular ions corresponding to diverse aerosol-phase species, by applying extractive electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (EESI-MS) to indoor air analysis for the first time, as part of the highly instrumented HOMEChem field study. We demonstrate how the complex spectra of EESI-MS are screened in order to extract chemical information and investigate the possibility of interference from gas-phase semivolatile species. During experiments that simulated the Thanksgiving US holiday meal preparation, EESI-MS quantified multiple species, including fatty acids, carbohydrates, siloxanes, and phthalates. Intercomparisons with Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS) and Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer suggest that EESI-MS quantified a large fraction of OA. Comparisons with FIGAERO-CIMS shows similar signal levels and good correlation, with a range of 100 for the relative sensitivities. Comparisons with SV-TAG for phthalates and with SV-TAG and AMS for total siloxanes also show strong correlation. EESI-MS observations can be used with gas-phase measurements to identify co-emitted gas- and aerosol-phase species, and this is demonstrated using complementary gas-phase PTR-MS observations.     

The day of the week when you were born in 700 ms: Calendar computation in an autistic savant.

Some individuals are able to determine the weekday of a given date in a few seconds (finding for instance that June 12, 1900, was a Tuesday). This ability has fascinated scientists for many years because it is predominantly observed in people with limited intelligence and may appear very early in life. Exceptional visual memory, exceptional concentration abilities, or privileged access to lower levels of information not normally available through introspection have been advanced to explain such phenomena. In the present article, the authors show that a simple cognitive model can explain all aspects of the performance of Donny, a young autistic savant who is possibly the fastest and most accurate calendar prodigy ever described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neurophysiological Model of the Normal and Abnormal Human Pupil

A model of the pathways controlling the size of the human pupil is presented. Computer simulation of this model demonstrates the role played by each of the elements in the pupil pathways. Simulations of the effects of drugs and a few common abnormalities in the system also help to illustrate the workings of the internal processes. Computer models of this type can be used as teaching aids or as tools for testing of hypotheses regarding the system.     

Circuit techniques for large CSEA SRAMs

The CMOS-storage emitter-access (CSEA) memory cell offers faster access than the MOS cells used in conventional BiCMOS SRAMs but using it in large memory arrays poses several problems. Novel BiCMOS circuit approaches to address the problems of decoding power, electronic noise, level translation, and write disturbance are described. Results on a 64-kb CSEA SRAM using these techniques are reported. The device, fabricated in an 0.8-μm BiCMOS technology, achieves read access and write pulse time of less than 4 ns while dissipating 1.7 W at a case temperature of 70°C     

Adaptive generation of surfaces in volume data

A widespread approach to generating polygonal approximations of iso-surfaces or contour surfaces in volume data is the socalled marching-cubes algorithm. This algorithm, however, has the disadvantage that the number of polygonal chains generated is considerable. The splitting-box algorithm presented here reduces the number of polygonal chains by adapting their size to the shape of the surface. The resulting polygonal chains offer a wide spectrum for representing the contour surface. An exact representation is achieved by a new type of generic patches calculated from the polygonal chains. Approximations of different quality may be obtained by combining the algorithm generating the patches with simple triangulations.     

Decentralized energy supply: Suitability for the UK's industrial sectors

From the results reported here it is suggested that policy decisions about the potential contribution of decentralized energy supply systems to UK industrial energy requirements should be based on the suitability of individual sectors rather than averaged over all sectors. The suitability of decentralized energy sources is evaluated, based on a themodynamic match between source and demand. This suitability criterion is used to identify the most appropriate sector in manufacturing industries for the adoption of decentralized energy supply, leaving aside economic cost considerations and individual site requirements.     

A neural network to compute the Hutchinson metric in fractal imageprocessing

The Hutchinson metric is a natural measure of the discrepancy between two images for use in fractal image processing. A neural network is described which can quickly calculate this metric. By combining this with the architecture previously described by the author for implementing the Markov operator of an iterated function system (IFS) on a neural network, a fast method is obtained for determining the distance between a target image and the invariant measure of a trial IFS. This has obvious applications to Barnsley's fractal image compression scheme     

Trellis-coded direct-sequence spread-spectrum communications

This paper considers the application of trellis coding techniques to direct-sequence spread-spectrum multiple-access (DS/SSMA) communication. The unique feature of the trellis codes considered is that they are constructed over the set of possible signature sequences rather than over some standard 2-D signal constellation. The resulting codes have a small number of signals per dimension. We present several examples of these trellis codes, and suggest possible methods of implementation. We also present a detailed error analysis for this system, which employs techniques developed by Lehnert and Pursley (1987, 1989)) to accurately model the multiple access interference. We generate numerical results for several examples and conclude that the proposed trellis coded systems yield significant performance improvements over binary antipodal DS/SSMA systems. In addition, the new trellis codes perform better than standard error control techniques with the same complexity and code rate. Analytic results are verified with simulations     

Error rate for optimal follower tone-jamming

The performance of a countermeasure technique in the presence of the optimal follower multitone jammer is evaluated for frequency-hopped spread spectrum (FHSS) communications. It is shown that, with a certain probability, the optimal jammer will have dual tones in a frequency channel     

Vollständige Beschreibung der Spannungs-Dehnungs-Kurven mit Hooke-Gerade,Fließhorizontale und Verfestigungsklothoide

Es werden die experimentellen und numerischen Ergebnisse dargelegt, um die gesamte Spannungs-Dehnungs-Kurve des Zugversuches mit sechs Kennwerten zu beschreiben. Dies sind: Elastizitätsmodul, Streckgrenze, Fließdehnung, Zugfestigkeit, Gleichmaßdehnung und Verfestigungsmodul. Dadurch werden auch im überelastischen Bereich numerische Beziehungen möglich zwischen: Verformungen und Spannungen, Dehngrenzen, Tangenten-Modulen und Arbeitsvermögen. Die Beziehungen erweitern die Ermittlung von Last- und Eigenspannungen, und die Berechnungen beim plastischen Umformen, beim Traglastverfahren und beim Messen von Kerbspannungen.