Kinetics of the Carbon Monoxide Oxidation Reaction Under Microwave Heating

915 MHz microwave heating has been used to drive the CO oxidation reaction over Pd/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} with out significantly affecting the reaction kinetics. As compared to an identical conventionally heated system, the activation energy, pre-exponential factor, and reaction order with respect to CO were unchanged. Temperature was measured using a thermocouple extrapolation technique. Microwave-induced thermal gradients were found to play a significant role in kinetic observations. The authors chose the CO oxidation reaction over a supported metal catalyst because the reaction kinetics are well known, and because of the diverse dielectric properties of the various elements in the system: CO is a polar molecule, O{sub 2} and CO{sub 2} are non-polar, Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} is a dielectric, and Pt and Pd are conductors

Vector Meson Dominance and gρππg_{\rho\pi\pi} at Finite Temperature from QCD Sum Rules

A Finite Energy QCD sum rule at non-zero temperature is used to determine the $q^2$- and the T-dependence of the $\rho \pi \pi$ vertex function in the space-like region. A comparison with an independent QCD determination of the electromagnetic pion form factor $F_{\pi}$ at $T \neq 0$ indicates that Vector Meson Dominance holds to a very good approximation at finite temperature. At the same time, analytical evidence for deconfinement is obtained from the result that $g_{\rho \pi \pi}(q^{2},T)$ vanishes at the critical temperature $T_c$, independently of $q^{2}$. Also, by extrapolating the $\rho \pi \pi$ form factor to $q^2 = 0$, it is found that the pion radius increases with increasing $T$, and it diverges at $T=T_c$.Comment: 7 pages, Latex, 3 figures to be delivered from the authors by request, to appear in Phys. Lett.

Numerical solution of Q^2 evolution equation for the transversity distribution Delta_T q

We investigate numerical solution of the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli- Parisi (DGLAP) Q^2 evolution equation for the transversity distribution Delta_T q or the structure function h_1. The leading-order (LO) and next-to- leading-order (NLO) evolution equations are studied. The renormalization scheme is MS or overline{MS} in the NLO case. Dividing the variables x and Q^2 into small steps, we solve the integrodifferential equations by the Euler method in the variable Q^2 and by the Simpson method in the variable x. Numerical results indicate that accuracy is better than 1% in the region 10^{-5}<x<0.8 if more than fifty Q^2 steps and more than five hundred x steps are taken. We provide a FORTRAN program for the Q^2 evolution and devolution of the transversity distribution Delta_T q or h_1. Using the program, we show the LO and NLO evolution results of the valence-quark distribution Delta_T u_v + Delta_T d_v, the singlet distribution sum_i (Delta_T q_i + Delta_T qbar_i), and the flavor asymmetric distribution Delta_T ubar - Delta_T dbar.They are also compared with the longitudinal evolution results.Comment: 1+29 pages, LaTeX2e, epsfig.sty, amsmath.sty, 6 eps figures. Submitted for publication. Complete postscript file is available at ftp://ftp.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/pub/paper/riko/quantum1 or at http://www.cc.saga-u.ac.jp/saga-u/riko/physics/quantum1/structure.html Our evolution program may be obtained upon email request. (See the WWW home page for the details.) Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Initializing Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis

Component Analysis (CA) consists of a set of statistical techniques that decompose data to appropriate latent components that are relevant to the task-at-hand (e.g., clustering, segmentation, classification, alignment). During the past few years, an explosion of research in probabilistic CA has been witnessed, with the introduction of several novel methods (e.g., Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis, Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis (PLDA), Probabilistic Canonical Correlation Analysis). PLDA constitutes one of the most widely used supervised CA techniques which is utilized in order to extract suitable, distinct subspaces by exploiting the knowledge of data annotated in terms of different labels. Nevertheless, an inherent difficulty in PLDA variants is the proper initialization of the parameters in order to avoid ending up in poor local maxima. In this light, we propose a novel method to initialize the parameters in PLDA in a consistent and robust way. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated via a set of experiments on the modified XM2VTS database, which is provided by the authors of the original PLDA model

Baryogenesis, 30 Years after

A review of the basic principles of baryogenesis is given. Baryogenesis in heavy particle decays as well as electroweak, SUSY-condensate, and spontaneous baryogenesis are discussed. The models of abundant creation of antimatter in the universe are briefly reviewed.Comment: 30 pages, latex twic

Magnetization and dynamically induced finite densities in three-dimensional Chern-Simons QED

In (2+1)-dimensional QED with a Chern-Simons term, we show that spontaneous magnetization occurs in the context of finite density vacua, which are the lowest Landau levels fully or half occupied by fermions. Charge condensation is shown to appear so as to complement the fermion anti-fermion condensate, which breaks the flavor U(2N) symmetry and causes fermion mass generation. The solutions to the Schwinger-Dyson gap equation show that the fermion self-energy contributes to the induction of a finite fermion density and/or fermion mass. The magnetization can be supported by charge condensation for theories with the Chern-Simons coefficient $\kappa=N e^2/2 \pi$, and $\kappa=N e^2/4 \pi$, under the Gauss law constraint. For $\kappa=N e^2/4 \pi$, both the magnetic field and the fermion mass are simultaneously generated in the half-filled ground state, which breaks the U(2N) symmetry as well as the Lorentz symmetry.Comment: 47 pages, 5 figures, revtex; revised for publication in Nucl. Phys. B, added some references in section 1 and corrected typo

Ipsilateral common iliac artery plus femoral artery clamping for inducing sciatic nerve ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats: a reliable and simple method

The aim of this study was to develop a practical model of sciatic ischemia reperfusion (I/R) injury producing serious neurologic deficits and being technically feasible compared with the current time consuming or ineffective models. Thirty rats were divided into 6 groups (n = 5). Animal were anesthetized by using ketamine (50 mg/kg) and xylazine (4 mg/kg). Experimental groups included a sham-operated group and five I/R groups with different reperfusion time intervals (0 h, 3 h, 1 d, 4 d, 7 d). In I/R groups, the right common iliac artery and the right femoral artery were clamped for 3 hrs. Sham-operated animals underwent only laparotomy without induction of ischemia. Just before euthanasia, behavioral scores (based on gait, grasp, paw position, and pinch sensitivity) were obtained and then sciatic nerves were removed for light-microscopy studies (for ischemic fiber degeneration (IFD) and edema). Behavioral score deteriorated among the ischemic groups compared with the control group (p < 0.01), with maximal behavioral deficit occurring at 4 days of reperfusion. Axonal swelling and IFD were found to happen only after 4 and 7 days, respectively. Our observations led to an easy-to-use but strong enough method for inducing and studying I/R injury in peripheral nerves

Thermal Gradient Mid- and Far-Infrared Spectroscopy as Tools for Characterization of Protein Carbohydrate Lyophilizates

Protein drugs play an important role in modern day medicine. Typically, these proteins are formulated as liquids requiring cold chain processing. To circumvent the cold chain and achieve better storage stability, these proteins can be dried in the presence of carbohydrates. We demonstrate that thermal gradient mid- and far-infrared spectroscopy (FTIR and THz-TDS, respectively) can provide useful information about solid-state protein carbohydrate formulations regarding mobility and intermolecular interactions. A model protein (BSA) was lyophilized in the presence of three carbohydrates with different size and protein stabilizing capacity. A gradual increase in mobility was observed with increasing temperature in formulations containing protein and/or larger carbohydrates (oligo- or polysaccharides), lacking a clear onset of fast mobility as was observed for smaller molecules. Furthermore, both techniques are able to identify the glass transition temperatures (T-g) of the samples. FTIR provides additional information as it can independently monitor changes in protein and carbohydrate bands at the T-g. Lastly, THz-TDS confirms previous findings that protein-carbohydrate interactions decrease with increasing molecular weight of the carbohydrate, which results in decreased protein stabilization