Mesopore etching under supercritical conditions – A shortcut to hierarchically porous silica monoliths

Hierarchically porous silica monoliths are obtained in the two-step Nakanishi process, where formation of a macro microporous silica gel is followed by widening micropores to mesopores through surface etching. The latter step is carried out through hydrothermal treatment of the gel in alkaline solution and necessitates a lengthy solvent exchange of the aqueous pore fluid before the ripened gel can be dried and calcined into a mechanically stable macro mesoporous monolith. We show that using an ethanol water (95.6/4.4, v/v) azeotrope as supercritical fluid for mesopore etching eliminates the solvent exchange, ripening, and drying steps of the classic route and delivers silica monoliths that can withstand fast heating rates for calcination. The proposed shortcut decreases the overall preparation time from ca. one week to ca. one day. Porosity data show that the alkaline conditions for mesopore etching are crucial to obtain crack-free samples with a narrow mesopore size distribution. Physical reconstruction of selected samples by confocal laser scanning microscopy and subsequent morphological analysis confirms that monoliths prepared via the proposed shortcut possess the high homogeneity of silica skeleton and macropore space that is desirable in adsorbents for flow-through applications

Automatic 3D facial model and texture reconstruction from range scans

This paper presents a fully automatic approach to fitting a generic facial model to detailed range scans of human faces to reconstruct 3D facial models and textures with no manual intervention (such as specifying landmarks). A Scaling Iterative Closest Points (SICP) algorithm is introduced to compute the optimal rigid registrations between the generic model and the range scans with different sizes. And then a new template-fitting method, formulated in an optmization framework of minimizing the physically based elastic energy derived from thin shells, faithfully reconstructs the surfaces and the textures from the range scans and yields dense point correspondences across the reconstructed facial models. Finally, we demonstrate a facial expression transfer method to clone facial expressions from the generic model onto the reconstructed facial models by using the deformation transfer technique

Transfinite mean value interpolation in general dimension

AbstractMean value interpolation is a simple, fast, linearly precise method of smoothly interpolating a function given on the boundary of a domain. For planar domains, several properties of the interpolant were established in a recent paper by Dyken and the second author, including: sufficient conditions on the boundary to guarantee interpolation for continuous data; a formula for the normal derivative at the boundary; and the construction of a Hermite interpolant when normal derivative data is also available. In this paper we generalize these results to domains in arbitrary dimension

Iterative Methods for Visualization of Implicit Surfaces on GPU

The original publication is available at www.springerlink.comInternational audienceThe ray-casting of implicit surfaces on GPU has been explored in the last few years. However, until recently, they were restricted to second degree (quadrics). We present an iterative solution to ray cast cubics and quartics on GPU. Our solution targets efficient implementation, obtaining interactive rendering for thousands of surfaces per frame. We have given special attention to torus rendering since it is a useful shape for multiple CAD models. We have tested four different iterative methods, including a novel one, comparing them with classical tessellation solution

Immunohistochemical localization of fibronectin as a tool for the age determination of human skin wounds

We analyzed the distribution of fibronectin in routinely embedded tissue specimens from 53 skin wounds and 6 postmortem wounds. In postmortem wounds a faint but focal positive staining was exclusively found at the margin of the specimens which dit not extend into the adjacent stroma. Vital wounds were classified into 3 groups. The first comprising lesions with wound ages ranging from a few seconds to 30 min, the second comprising those with wound ages upt to 3 weeks, and the third group with lesions more than 3 weeks old. Ten out of 17 lesions with a wound age up to 30 min showed a clear positive reaction within the wound area. Three specimens in this group were completely negative, while in 4 additional cases the result was not significantly different from postmortem lesions. These 7 cases were characterized by acute death with extremely short survival times (only seconds). In wounds up to 3 weeks old fibronectin formed a distinct network containing an increasing number of inflammatory cells corresponding to the wound age. In 2 cases with a survival time of 17 days and in all wounds older than 3 weeks fibronectin was restricted to the surface of fibroblasts and to parallel arranged fibers in the granulation tissue without any network structures. We present evidence that fibronectin is a useful marker for vital wounds with a survival time of more than a few minutes. Fibronectin appears before neutrophilic granulocytes migrate into the wound area. Since a faint positive fibronectin staining is seen in postmortem lesions and bleedings, we propose that only those wounds which show strong positive fibronectin staining also extending into the adjacent stroma should be regarded as vital

Study of Z boson production in pPb collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV

© 2016 The Author.The production of Z bosons in pPb collisions at sNN=5.02 TeV is studied by the CMS experiment via the electron and muon decay channels. The inclusive cross section is compared to pp collision predictions, and found to scale with the number of elementary nucleon-nucleon collisions. The differential cross sections as a function of the Z boson rapidity and transverse momentum are measured. Though they are found to be consistent within uncertainty with theoretical predictions both with and without nuclear effects, the forward-backward asymmetry suggests the presence of nuclear effects at large rapidities. These results provide new data for constraining nuclear parton distribution functions

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

The dual-function chaperone HycH improves assembly of the formate hydrogenlyase complex

The assembly of multi-protein complexes requires the concerted synthesis and maturation of its components and subsequently their co-ordinated interaction. The membrane-bound formate hydrogenlyase (FHL) complex is the primary hydrogen-producing enzyme in Escherichia coli and is composed of seven subunits mostly encoded within the hycA-I operon for [NiFe]-hydrogenase-3 (Hyd-3). The HycH protein is predicted to have an accessory function and is not part of the final structural FHL complex. In this work, a mutant strain devoid of HycH was characterized and found to have significantly reduced FHL activity due to instability of the electron transfer subunits. HycH was shown to interact specifically with the unprocessed species of HycE, the catalytic hydrogenase subunit of the FHL complex, at different stages during maturation and assembly of the complex. Variants of HycH were generated with the aim of identifying interacting residues and those that influence activity. The R70/71/K72, the Y79, the E81, and the Y128 variants exchanges interrupt the interaction with HycE without influencing the FHL activity. In contrast, FHL activity but not the interaction with HycE was negatively influenced by H37 exchanges with polar residues. Finally, a HycH Y30 variant was found to be unstable. Surprisingly, an overlapping function between HycH with its homologous counterpart HyfJ from the operon encoding [NiFe]-hydrogenase 4 (Hyd-4) was identified and this is the first example of sharing maturation machinery components between Hyd-3 and Hyd-4 complexes. The data presented here show that HycH has a novel dual role as an assembly chaperone for a cytoplasmic [NiFe]-hydrogenase.</p

"Vielleicht gibt es Kinder, die keine Freude in dem Lernarrangement finden". Perspektiven und Spannungsfelder von Vernetzung für kindheitspädagogische Hochschullernwerkstätten

Hochschullernwerkstätten in kindheitspädagogischen Studiengängen adressieren Professionalisierungsprozesse von (angehenden) Fachkräften für die pädagogische Arbeit in Kindertageseinrichtungen (Kaiser & Hormann i. D.). Zentrale Bedeutung hat die Konzeption didaktischer Arrangements, die die Alltagspraktiken und Handlungsperspektiven dieser beeinflussen. Der folgende Beitrag untersucht daher den Mehrwert solcher Settings in der Vernetzung mit Kindertageseinrichtungen. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Erwartungen der verschiedenen Akteure und der Wissenstransfer zwischen elementarpädagogischen Einrichtungen und der Hochschule. Die Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorie (ANT) von Latour (2007) sowie deren Weiterentwicklungen (vgl. Mathar 2012; Sørensen 2012) beschreiben die Welt als ein Netzwerk von menschlichen und nichtmenschlichen Akteuren. Im Kontext der Hochschullernwerkstätten dienen diese Netzwerke zur Analyse der Dynamiken zwischen den Beteiligten und den didaktischen Methoden. (DIPF/Orig.

Lernwerkstatt Campuskinder – eine spezifische Form der Lernwerkstatt im Rahmen der Kooperation zwischen Stadt Hildesheim und HAWK Hildesheim

Die Lernwerkstatt Campuskinder ist inhaltlich und strukturell mit den Hochschullernwerkstätten Ästhetische Lernwerkstatt und Ästhetisches Labor verknüpft, die räumlich und strukturell an der Hochschule für angewandte Wissenschaft und Kunst (HAWK) Hildesheim, Fakultät Soziale Arbeit und Gesundheit im Bachelorstudiengang Kindheitspädagogik verankert sind. (DIPF/Orig.