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This paper reports an investigation of different persulfate (PS) activations, including PS at 20 °C (PS), thermally activated PS at 70 °C (T-PS), ferrous-ion activated PS at 20 °C [Fe(II)-PS)], hydrogen peroxide activated PS at 20 °C, and sodium hydroxide activated PS at 20 °C, for degradation of the herbicide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) in aqueous phase. Several findings were made in this study including the followings: the 2,4-D degradation rates in T-PS and Fe(II)-PS systems were higher than other systems. However, complete degradation of 2,4-D and associated derivatives can be reached in all oxidation systems, with various reaction times. When considering the results of PS consumption during the 48 h reaction time to reach complete 2,4-D degradation, the T-PS system consumed all of the PS while only 10 % of the PS was consumed in the Fe(II)-PS system. The evaluation of optimum PS and ferrous ion doses indicated that under a fixed initial PS concentration, increasing Fe2+ concentration generally increased the amount of initial rapid degradation of 2,4-D and dissolved organic carbon. However, the effectiveness of the Fe(II)-PS system may be inhibited by the presence of excess iron. When a fixed level of Fe2+ was employed, various PS concentrations resulted in approximately equal 2,4-D degradation. The Fe(II)-PS system was found to be sensitive to the initial Fe2+ concentration, and the presence of soil revealed minor influence on the 2,4-D degradation by the Fe(II)-PS system. These findings indicate that the iron-activated PS process may be an effective method for remediating 2,4-D contamination.

Early studies of the retinoblastoma gene (RB) have uncovered its critical role as a regulator of the G(1)/S cell cycle phase progression. Surprisingly, genetic approaches in mammals and nematodes have also shown RB controls cell lineage specification and aspects of differentiation. The RB gene product accomplishes this by diverse mechanisms such as by interacting with tissue-specific transcription factors, enhancing RNA interference, and modifying chromatin structure. We review recent studies uncovering novel mechanisms by which RB works in several cell lineages and we provide perspectives on how these new findings might relate to RB tumor suppression.

This paper describes a process by which computer-aided design methods are used for the tolerance charting of products with angular features. If a product contains one or more angular features, such as chamfers and tapered surfaces, radial or normal machining of the features will result in axial dimension changes. In this paper, basic trigonometric formulae are first presented to explain the phenomenon of tolerance accumulation. In the process of tolerance charting, dummy cuts are included to reflect the corresponding dimensional changes due to indirect machining. With the assistance of flags and linked lists, the system proposed can automatically identify all dimensional chains which are associated with either regular cuts or dummy cuts. Moreover, optimisation techniques are recommended to allocate the allowable tolerances as specified by blueprints. In the search for an optimal design, the total manufacturing cost defined by the working tolerances is the objective function to be minimised.

Cercopithecids did not arrive in China until the latest Tertiary, relatively late in their evolutionary history.