Bias caused by water adsorption in hourly PM measurements

Beta-attenuation monitors are used worldwide to monitor PM mass concentration with high temporal resolution. Hourly PM10 and PM2.5 dry mass concentrations are publicly available with the tacit assumption that water is effectively removed prior to the measurement. However, as both the filter material of the monitor and the aerosol particles are capable of retaining a significant amount of water even at low relative humidities, the basic assumption may not be valid, resulting in significant bias in reported PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations. Here we show that in PM10 measurement, particle-free air can produce apparent hourly average PM concentrations in the range of −13–+21 µgm−3 under conditions of fluctuating relative humidity. Positive and negative apparent readings are observed with increasing and decreasing relative humidities, respectively. Similar phenomena have been observed when the instrument filter was previously loaded with atmospheric aerosol. As a result the potential measurement biases in hourly readings arising from the interaction with water may be in the range of −53...+69 %

Black carbon or brown carbon? The nature of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols

Although the definition and measurement techniques for atmospheric 'black carbon' ('BC') or 'elemental carbon'' ('EC') have long been subjects of scientific controversy, the recent discovery of light-absorbing carbon that is not black ('brown carbon, C_brown') makes it imperative to reassess and redefine the components that make up light-absorbing carbonaceous matter (LAC) in the atmosphere. Evidence for the atmospheric presence of C_brown comes from (1) spectral aerosol light absorption measurements near specific combustion sources, (2) observations of spectral properties of water extracts of continental aerosol, (3) laboratory studies indicating the formation of light-absorbing organic matter in the atmosphere, and (4) indirectly from the chemical analogy of aerosol species to colored natural humic substances. We show that brown carbon may severely bias measurements of 'BC' and 'EC' over vast parts of the troposphere, especially those strongly polluted by biomass burning, where the mass concentration of C_brown is high relative to that of soot carbon. Chemical measurements to determine 'EC' are biased by the refractory nature of C_brown as well as by complex matrix interferences. Optical measurements of 'BC' suffer from a number of problems: (1) many of the presently used instruments introduce a substantial bias into the determination of aerosol light absorption, (2) there is no unique conversion factor between light absorption and 'EC' or 'BC' concentration in ambient aerosols, and (3) the difference in spectral properties between the different types of LAC, as well as the chemical complexity of C_brown, lead to several conceptual as well as practical complications. We also suggest that due to the sharply increasing absorption of C_brown towards the UV, single-wavelength light absorption measurements may not be adequate for the assessment of absorption of solar radiation in the troposphere. We discuss the possible consequences of these effects for our understanding of tropospheric processes, including their influence on UV-irradiance, atmospheric photochemistry and radiative transfer in clouds

Atmospheric tar balls: aged primary droplets from biomass burning?

Atmospheric tar balls are particles of special morphology and composition that are fairly abundant in the plumes of biomass smoke. These particles form a specific subset of brown carbon (BrC) which has been shown to play a significant role in atmospheric shortwave absorption and, by extension, climate forcing. Here we suggest that tar balls are produced by the direct emission of liquid tar droplets followed by heat transformation upon biomass burning. For the first time in atmospheric chemistry we generated tar-ball particles from liquid tar obtained previously by dry distillation of wood in an all-glass apparatus in the laboratory with the total exclusion of flame processes. The particles were perfectly spherical with a mean optical diameter of 300 nm, refractory, externally mixed, and homogeneous in the contrast of the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. They lacked any graphene-like microstructure and exhibited a mean carbon-to-oxygen ratio of 10. All of the observed characteristics of laboratory-generated particles were very similar to those reported for atmospheric tar-ball particles in the literature, strongly supporting our hypothesis regarding the formation mechanism of atmospheric tar-ball particles

Signal-integrity measurements on VME320 backplane

Presentation made at the 4th Workshop on Electronics for LHC Experiments, INFN Rome, 21-25 September 1998.Using high-speed buses in data-acquisition systems is very much widespread. The bus topology and performance is one of the key factor in the overallperformance of the whole system. The limitation of the speed which can be achieved on a backplane-like bus is determined by the signal-integritybehavior of the bus and the driver and receiver of the daughter cards. This paper deals with the evaluation of one of the latest VME-like backplanes.Measurement results are presented for the impedance profile, frequency-domain response, skew, eye-diagram and BER of the transactions

Quantitative assessment of organosulfates in size-segregated rural fine aerosol

International audienceOrganosulfates have recently come into the focus of organic aerosol research as potentially important components of water-soluble secondary organic aerosol (SOA) which now dominate tropospheric fine aerosol. Their presence has been confirmed by the identification of sulfate esters of abundant biogenic carbonyl compounds in both smog chamber and continental aerosol. However, none of the studies have been able to determine the mass contribution of organosulfates to SOA. In this paper, as possibly the very first attempt to quantify organosulfates in ambient aerosol, we inferred the mass concentrations of organosulfates by concurrently determining mass concentrations of total sulfur, sulfate and methanesulfonate in rural fine aerosol using two highly sensitive analytical techniques. Although uncertainties were relatively large, we found that mass concentrations of organosulfates in water-soluble fine aerosol ranged from 0.02 ?gS m?3 to 0.09 ?gS m?3 yielding a mass contribution of 6?12% to bulk sulfur concentrations (or 6?14% to sulfate concentrations). The inferred size distribution of organosulfates suggested that they possibly form in heterogeneous reactions from semi-volatile carbonyl compounds with subsequent or concurrent condensation of gaseous sulfuric acid producing a refractory organic film on particle surfaces

Chemical transformations in organic aerosol from biomass burning

International audienceFine aerosol particles were collected separately during daytime and nighttime at a tropical pasture site in Rondônia, Brazil, during the burning and dry-to-wet transition period in 2002. Total carbon (TC) and water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) were measured by evolved gas analysis (EGA). Based on the thermochemical properties of the fine aerosol, the relative amounts of the low and higher molecular weight compounds were estimated. It was found that the thermally refractory (possibly higher molecular weight) compounds dominated the TC composition. Their contribution to TC was higher in the daytime samples than in the nighttime ones. The relative share of WSOC also showed a statistically significant diel variation and so did its refractory fraction. Anhydrosugars and phenolic acids were determined by GC-MS and their diel variation was studied. Based on the decrease of their relative concentrations between the biomass burning and transition periods and their distinctly different diel variations, we suggest that the phenolic acids may undergo chemical transformations in the aerosol phase, possibly towards more refractory compounds (humic-like substances, HULIS), as has been suggested previously. These conclusions are supported by the results of the thermally assisted hydrolysis and methylation gas chromatography-mass spectrometry of the same filter samples

Internal quality control of an enzyme-linked immunoassay for Cry1Ab toxin detection applied in animal tissues

Reliable determination of microbial or transgenic Cry toxins is an essential issue in food and feed analyses, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) are the method of choice for quantifying these toxins currently in food and environmental analysis. Internal Quality Control (IQC) is an indispensable method to assess accuracy, precision, and reproducibility of analytical measurements. To assess the utility of the ELISA method, IQC was performed on EnviroLogix Cry1Ab/Cry1Ac QualiPlate ELISA with manufacturer supplied analytical standards. Applicability of negative and positive controls (C− and C+) was examined by Shewhart Control Charts for bias and Control Chart of the Range of Duplicates for precision. Linear regression (up to 5 ng ml−1 Cry1Ab concentration) of the commercial ELISA kit was compared to sigmoid calibration (up to 60 ng ml−1 Cry1Ab concentration). For immunoassay optimization process, possible matrix effects in different liquid and solid vertebrate tissues were examined by determination of the limit of detection values in these matrices

Influence of germination on lectin in Lens culinaris seeds

The effect of germination conditions on the lectin of Lens culinaris var. Magda 20 seeds was studied. The seeds were germinated at 20 °C under different conditions of watering and light and for different periods of time. The seed lectin was assayed by haemagglutination and quantified by competitive ELISA. Changes in lectin content during germination were also monitored by SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting. Haemagglutinating activity and lectin content in the seeds were not changed during the first three days regardless of the conditions of the germination. However, lectin concentration was significantly higher after six days of germination; relative lectin levels being particularly high when germination was carried out in the light and with daily watering. The results of SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting have also shown that the lectin was not degraded during the first six days of germination however, other storage-proteins were broken down by proteolysis

Chemical characterization of laboratory-generated tar ball particles

The chemical properties of laboratory-generated tar ball (Lab-TB) particles produced from dry distillate (wood tars) of three different wood species in the laboratory were investigated by analytical techniques that had never been used before for their characterization. The elemental compositions of laboratory-generated tar balls (Lab- TBs) from three tree species were very similar to one another and to those characteristic of atmospheric tar balls (TBs) collected from the savanna fire during the SAFARI 2000 sampling campaign. The O=C and H= C molar ratios of the generated Lab-TBs were at the upper limit characteristic of soot particles. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) spectra of the generated Lab-TBs were very similar to one another as well and also showed some similarity with those of atmospheric humic-like substances (HULIS). The FT-IR measurements indicated that Lab-TBs have a higher proportion of aromatic structure than HULIS and the oxygen atoms of Lab-TBs are mainly found in hydroxyl and keto functional groups. Whereas Raman activity was detected in the starting materials of the Lab-TBs (wood tars) in the range of 1000–1800 c